<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Roses, Hearts, Blood by FadesInTheSun</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27978984">Roses, Hearts, Blood</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/FadesInTheSun/pseuds/FadesInTheSun'>FadesInTheSun</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, And also more roses, Artemis hates everything (but not really), Beauty and the Beast Elements, Crossdressing, Curse Breaking, Fairy Tale Curses, Humor, Mystery, Possibly more relationships than tagged, Puss in Boots Elements, Red Riding Hood Elements, Roses, Sleeping Beauty Elements</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:41:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>27,970</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27978984</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/FadesInTheSun/pseuds/FadesInTheSun</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Usagi falls foul of an enchanted castle; her maid Mako takes her place with its Beast... and finds more secrets. A sleeping prince at the garden's heart. Whispers on the breeze. Beautiful young men targeting Usagi's friends: red-cloaked Rei; Aimé the physician's "son"; and Minako, the Marquis de Carabas's daughter...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Chiba Mamoru/Tsukino Usagi, Kino Makoto/Nephrite, Prince Endymion/Tsukino Usagi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Senshi &amp; Shitennou Mini Bang 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue:  There was once ...</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>All kudos to lizleenimbus, whose amazing and delightful art for this story and design for the Beast's appearance can be found on <a href="https://lizleeillustration.tumblr.com/post/637073730160492544/im-delighted-to-finally-be-able-to-post-the">lizlee's Tumblr</a> should the links fail.</p><p>Thanks also to smokingbomber and Starling Sinclair, who provided beta assistance; to heavensthunder on Tumblr and to nimiane04, who provided horse-related fact-checking; and to the SSMB20 mods, who were once again understanding when life reared up and ate me whole partway through writing.  Again.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There was once a very rich merchant, who had six children, three sons, and three daughters –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No. That’s the wrong story.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was once a very skilled artist, who had two children, one daughter, and one son. Being so very skilled, his services were often in great demand, and he was frequently away from his household. His wife was more than able to protect herself and their property, being the sort of woman that most would fear to cross. His son was small enough to largely keep to the household and its grounds, alternately wreaking terror among the gardeners and being hauled off by his tutors in their vain attempts to draw his attention to his studies. But as his daughter grew in age and in height and in length of golden hair, she did not altogether grow in sense, and he worried that she might be drawn astray and into danger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He considered finding a guard for her, but she had a particularly romantic heart, and the possibilities of that going awry concerned him only a little less than the problem already at hand. He considered her friends, but out of those one was quite as concerning a potential romantic target as a guard might have been, and another even more likely to fall into trouble than his daughter herself. The third, while both more sober and more intimidating, due to the constraints of her family had very little time free to spend on such things. So instead he sought after a companion: not a governess for Usagi to evade, but a young woman close to her own age. Someone who was sensible and thoughtful enough to provide a check on his daughter’s careless adventures, and compassionate and kind enough to make his daughter desire not to disappoint her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So it was that he brought the young orphan Makoto Kino into his household, who was far more than delighted to be able to claim room and board and clothing and instruction in return for her help.  Help that she gave with far more parts of the household than he’d originally intended.</span>
</p><p><span>She helped with baking in the mornings, producing pastries as delightful as the adults’. When the kitchen grew too busy to have room for her, she helped with the gardens, telling sprouting weed from waking bulb, coaxing the vegetables through poor weather, comforting the roses when the soil didn’t suit them. And when the artist’s daughter woke in the afternoons, Makoto helped with Usagi: with her clothes and hair, with keeping her out of the thorns and nettles in the gardens and at least some of the mud, with chaperoning her when she and her friend Aim</span><span>é</span> <span>exchanged visits, with nudging her awake when she fell asleep in some public place, with guiding her home when an excited run to an interesting shop left her uncertain what street she was on. Indeed, before long, no-one in the Tsukino household could remember how they’d managed before they’d had a Kino to help.</span></p><p>
  <span>The artist himself was so very much relieved of his concerns that, in time, he began to forget he’d had so many of them.  And so, one day, he decided to take his daughter on a short trip with him:  just the two of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Without Makoto Kino, who was surely needed at home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Surely, on such a short trip, his golden-haired daughter would never be drawn astray and into danger.  And surely no such danger would ever grow to involve her friends.</span>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://64.media.tumblr.com/fce7badf84790ec2c87e079c2ced5bf6/31641cc46cc29384-7e/s1280x1920/ac5fce4528f1007a5280ea8ce0f5659dd981f4c1.png"></a>
  
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Makoto: Usagi's homecoming</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The unthinkable was happening: not only was there was a snowstorm in spring, which happened sometimes, not only were two of the regular attendees of Usagi’s afternoon soirées not there yet, which also happened really rather regularly especially when one of them was Minako, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>the pastries were getting cold</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto strained at the window, trying desperately to see hints of red ribbon or golden hair in the garden or near stable. They were failing to appear, just as much as she was failing to be able to ignore the increasing intensity of the glares that Rei Hino was intermittently aiming at her back over her teacup, or the polite but notable silence surrounding Aimé Mizuno like a cool mist. There was tea, at least. And there </span>
  <em>
    <span>were</span>
  </em>
  <span> pastries. There was some kind of hospitality, even in the absence of a proper hostess.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You could go and wake her up.” At least Rei phrased it as a possibility rather than an order; she hadn’t quite run out of patience yet. “I’m surprised you didn’t already. Usually you have her up and dressed and her hair in some kind of order before we get here.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé stirred, and lifted his head, and was kind enough to speak. “That might be a trifle awkward for her just now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t see why. She wakes Usagi up daily, or else Usagi never wakes up at all.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto could imagine Aimé blinking slowly behind his glasses in the pause that followed. “Mademoiselle,” he said finally, “I don’t think it’s the room that she’d be going into that might concern her.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you saying that someone might think </span>
  <em>
    <span>we</span>
  </em>
  <span> need a chaperone?” Rei demanded. “What exactly are you implying?  That you’re about to make advances to me?  Or that I wouldn’t be able to fend them off?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé lifted both hands, his eyes widening as he leaned back a little. “Only that it might be safest for poor Makoto to bear her employer’s preferences in mind. You know how Tsukino senior is about these things.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, if ‘how’ means ‘positively medieval.’” Rei relented, though, and the heat of her displeasure abated, at least for a little while. But it wouldn’t last –</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No, there! There was the gold, barely visible through the snow, and the hood raised against it. Tendrils of hair caught in the wind. Makoto couldn’t be sure which of them it was, but – “I think I see Minako coming,” she said quickly. “Let me just go down to let her in.” And she escaped before Rei could devise a way to invite herself along.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Being on first-name terms with the daughter of a marquis had never been something Makoto had dreamed about before her employment on the Tsukino estate. But Usagi had a way of bending rules to suit her, and so it was that Makoto had (when none of the elders, or especially Usagi’s little brother, were looking) license to help the heir apparent to the Marquis de Carabas beat the snow off of her coat and fuss over her and demand she come right away for some tea to warm up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not chocolate?” Minako asked, making soulful eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“-- well, I might heat up the chocolate,” Makoto admitted. “But I was planning to save that for when Usagi got here.” A breath, and then a deepening of that breath, and she asked as casually as she could manage, “She was with you, wasn’t she? Did she stop to put together snowballs on the way in?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minako turned the soulful eyes into a perplexed blink. “I haven’t seen her since she and her father rode out two weeks ago. Isn’t that right, Artemis?” She hauled out her own father’s cat, buried inside her coat for extra warmth, and held him up with his hind legs dangling in the air. The cat glowered at her, unimpressed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto swallowed. “All right. Let’s go upstairs, and I’ll make some chocolate, and then we’ll talk.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Artemis wants chocolate, too,” Minako asserted staunchly, and carried the cat upstairs with her. Again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There!” Rei’s voice was plainly audible from the hallway the moment that Minako entered the room; Makoto hurried to get the door shut. Which simply meant that Rei directed the next words at her directly. “We have a chaperone now! Go and wake Usagi up. She’s been away for ages! We want to hear about it!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto let her breath out, and sagged back against the door. “I can’t,” she said miserably. “She’s not here. I was hoping she might have stayed at Minako’s --”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“WHAT.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei was no longer across the room. Rei was managing to tower over Makoto despite Makoto being the taller of the two. Her nose was less than two inches from the tip of Makoto’s. “WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SOMETHING.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto drew a careful breath, blinking twice as a sudden drop of sweat tried to trickle down her eyelid. They weren’t near the fire. It couldn’t be that hot. It must just have been the contrast from the cold air coming in with Minako, and the heat coming off of Rei’s anger-reddened cheeks. “Because – it –“</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because you got here first, didn’t you?” Minako chirped from behind Rei. “And if she’d told you when it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> you, you’d have demanded to run off and go looking for Usagi. And if she’d told you and Aimé, you’d all still have been arguing about it when I got here, and had to start all over with the explaining to me and the yelling. So she told us all at once! That’s fair. And it saved you time! And breath! Artemis says you only have so many of those, you know.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei turned on the young noblewoman, as if neither of their fathers could possibly have caused trouble for the other one, or possibly as if Rei would have been delighted to cause her father a problem. “You weren’t even here! Don’t go pretending you know what happened --”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé blinked at Rei again. “But you were the one to get here first,” he pointed out in utterly reasonable tones. “Besides, you’re not letting the poor girl finish explaining. The invitations said Usagi and her father were expecting to be back by now, didn’t they?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yesterday at the latest,” Makoto confirmed. “But the snow started last night.” Her voice weakened a little. “It seemed perfectly reasonable that they might have found somewhere to stay. And Usagi does have that awful habit of sleeping forever; even with her father to make someone prod her awake,” she refused to imagine Tsukino senior doing so himself, “they might have started late. Or they might have stopped to see someone on the way. I really did expect her to make her way back here with one of you...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But they didn’t.” Rei scowled at the pastries, which had undergone a mysterious diminution in number since Minako’s arrival.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Perhaps one of them was hurt,” Aimé offered worriedly. As a physician’s son and studying the same discipline himself, that sort of concern came easily to his mind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Or robbed,” Rei muttered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minako bounced upward, earning a startled yowl from her father’s cat. “Or kidnapped!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei glared at her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Or murdered!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Don’t help.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I like helping!” Minako protested. “And we should all help. We can go and find them! There are only so many ways into town! We can look for them! We can look for their hoofprints!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s snowing,” Rei said, with remarkable diction for someone whose teeth weren’t parting from each other. “There aren’t any hoofprints.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé inserted himself deftly between Rei’s right fist and Minako’s body, to avert any unfortunate collisions between the two. There had never been any before, but apparently he shared Makoto’s opinion that this wasn’t the time to start. “We could look,” he said. “If we stayed together, and we were very careful, we could look. Minako, your father’s estate is near the road Usagi and her father would have taken, isn’t it? They would have at least stopped there, if they got that far. So we could start there, and use that as a sort of … of a base, to go out from and come back to. So that we could warm up, and make sure that Usagi didn’t go past us while we were looking?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I want to warm up now,” Minako declared. “Makoto promised to make chocolate, and I intend to collect.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Usagi could be freezing to death in the snow,” Rei hissed at her, “and you want </span>
  <em>
    <span>chocolate</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> could freeze to death if I went back out there this soon. And Artemis wants chocolate, too.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé glanced pleadingly at Makoto. Makoto let out a breath. “Your cat,” she said, “is not having chocolate. It’s bad for him. I’ll see what I can do, and let the grooms know you’d like to leave early, and find out whether your horses are warm and rested enough to go back out.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minako brightened, pleased to be able to claim a semblance of victory. “You should make extra chocolate, in case Usagi wants some.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You are </span>
  <em>
    <span>ridiculous</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Rei complained. “It won’t last to your father’s estate! It’ll be frozen solid!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, it </span>
  <em>
    <span>would</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Minako agreed, and gestured toward the window. “But that’s Usagi there, isn’t it? I wonder what happened to her father? And her horse. It’s turned stark white!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei glanced out through the lattice of glass; stared; and turned to shove past Aimé and Makoto into the hallway, where she gathered her skirts and broke into an entirely unladylike run. Makoto followed, Aimé at her heels. They made it outside in time to help a shaky and pale Usagi, her traveling braids crusted with snow, down from the horse she was riding. Aimé took custody, helping her inside, dubiously assisted by Minako’s cat who insisted on hopping up into Usagi’s arms; at least the thing would keep her hands warm. Rei followed. Leaving Makoto, for a moment, alone with the horse as a stablehand emerged in vague confusion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was definitely not Usagi’s Crescent. (Not to be confused with Minako’s Crescent, which he also definitely was not.) Not only was he, as Minako had said, stark white, but he was distinctly larger, enough so that Makoto had been a little nervous about Usagi dismounting in her condition. Also, he was a </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span>, which made him particularly unlikely ever to have been Crescent. His tack was elaborate, but in a style that Makoto didn’t think she’d ever seen any visitors to the house adopt. Splendidly dark leather accented with gold, a blue saddlecloth with a finer and more even dye than any dress she owned. He’d carried bags as well as a rider; Makoto accepted them from the stablehand and turned to carry them inside, and wondered what in the world Usagi could have acquired that was so heavy, and what her father was thinking letting her ride a creature that size. Though the strange horse seemed very calm; perhaps that explained it.  Perhaps her father was familiar with him, and knew it’d be safe.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That didn’t explain what had happened to Crescent. It didn’t explain what had happened to </span>
  <em>
    <span>her father</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time she had ensconced the saddlebags in the warmth of their usual gathering room, along with a changed and dry and well-blanketed Usagi, a good supply of drinking chocolate, and more pastries to replace the ones that had mysteriously disappeared when Minako was left alone with them … well, by that time, Rei had stopped shouting, at least. More or less at the same time that Usagi had finally stopped shivering.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The problem, of course, was that Usagi had replaced shivering with bursting into tears every time she looked at Makoto. Makoto finally solved this problem by dragging a cushion back by the wall behind Usagi’s chair and sitting on </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span>, out of sight, but still where she could hear what was going on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She very, very much wanted to know what was going on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Usagi sniffled, hiccuped, and leaned her entire body toward Minako, who promptly dumped the cat in Usagi’s lap again. “There,” Minako declared. “Now you can’t get away. Tell us what </span>
  <em>
    <span>happened</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Usagi!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wrecked everything,” Usagi moaned. “It’s awful! And it’s all my fault!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>look</span>
  </em>
  <span> wrecked.” Rei scowled at her. “You look like you were out riding in a snowstorm like an idiot, but you don’t look </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrecked</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I suppose you might get chilblains,” Aimé offered, dubious.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No!” Usagi tried to wave her hands, and nearly gave herself a cat to the face. Yowling in outrage, Artemis avoided the collision by turning it into a leap up onto her shoulder. He balanced there for a moment with an affronted stare, nosed a tail of her hair out of the way, and leapt down again to stalk over to Makoto and curl up by her lap. On the floor. Where it was presumably safer. Usagi, now catless, drew a deeper breath. “No, no, no! Not like that. I. I did something. And now I have to go back. I promised. I just – I just came to say good-bye.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Usagi:  An excellent plan!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Should the links fail, the art in this chapter can be found at <a href="https://lizleeillustration.tumblr.com/post/637073730160492544/im-delighted-to-finally-be-able-to-post-the">lizleenimbus's Tumblr.</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It had all seemed like an excellent plan yesterday morning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Papa had </span>
  <em>
    <span>meant</span>
  </em>
  <span> to start back with Usagi, truly he had. They had had it all planned out. They were all packed, they knew what they were going to eat on the way, and there had been arrangements made with one of Papa’s friends to stop in and have dinner if they got there early or a nighttime snack if they got their late and stay overnight and have a good breakfast before they started out again. The friend had written about introducing his oldest son to Usagi, even, though Papa didn’t seem all that keen on that idea, and hadn’t let Usagi see the letter he’d written in return.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then there had been that man who’d approached Papa the evening before they were planning to leave – a wealthy merchant who wanted Papa to paint portraits of his children.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of his children.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All fourteen of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Right away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi knew the family secret. Papa’s family hadn’t had money; Papa had scraped and scratched his way into his apprenticeship, and had scraped and scratched his way through learning and understanding (mostly with Mama’s help) exactly what looked Proper instead of Gaudy and Uncultured. Part of what looked Proper was looking like money was an afterthought. And to get the kind of people paying you to make art that Papa did, you needed to look either Proper or Perhaps Partly Mad. Papa only looked Perhaps Partly Mad when people were trying to introduce Usagi to their sons; he was upset enough about Aimé, and even he admitted that Aimé didn’t seem Likely To Try Anything. So they needed to look Proper. And looking like money was an afterthought, when you didn’t have estates that just made money for you without your having to do much thinking about it (or that was the impression Usagi got from Minako about how it worked), took … well … a lot of money.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fourteen portraits were a lot of money. Especially since Papa usually charged people in trade half or two-thirds in advance, in case of their ships sinking while he was working.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But even if Papa didn’t finish the portraits there, just made drawings and made sure the drawings were right for what the father of fourteen (fourteen! How did that family still have fourteen children? Usagi wanted to strangle Shingo regularly and there were only two of them!) wanted, it would still take days and days and days. Even if everything went well, it would take almost a week to get everything sorted out for every portrait, and fourteen children times almost a week meant almost fourteen weeks and that meant … three months? Four? She lost track of the extra days, but anyhow, it meant Papa wouldn’t be going back till summer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she’d promised Aimé and Rei and Makoto and Minako that she’d be back. She’d promised! Just sending them another letter like Papa suggested and saying “oh, I won’t be back till summer” wouldn’t keep that promise. Especially since she couldn’t imagine getting through a whole season without Makoto’s help anymore (how would she ever get up in time for lunch?), and asking just Makoto to come join her wasn’t at all fair to the other three.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Papa’s expression when she tried to explain that made her think she wasn’t doing a very good job of explaining. But after a few hours of trying, he relented, and agreed that since it was all on good roads, and there hadn’t been any trouble along any of them in ages, and there wasn’t any possible way she could get lost, and she did have his friend’s estate to stop at overnight, and she promised till she was blue in the face (mostly from forgetting to breathe between because Papa was so close to giving in) that she wouldn’t run off with any of his friend’s sons, especially not the oldest…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>… she could ride back on her own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even if it wasn’t exactly Proper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All she had to do was behave, and stay on the road, and she’d be back in plenty of time to see everyone. Everything would be perfect.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yes, it had been an </span>
  <em>
    <span>excellent</span>
  </em>
  <span> plan. She wasn’t certain exactly where it had gone wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Admittedly, she’d started a little late, because it had been </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span> very cozy in the morning, and moving was just an unutterably difficult idea. And then she’d needed to get a good breakfast before she started, even if the good breakfast was more of a lunch. Well, more of a late lunch. And she’d needed to make sure she didn’t have any of Papa’s things in with hers, and Papa didn’t have any of her things in with his, and it didn’t make sense to leave the food for the road in with Papa’s things if he was staying, did it? So she rearranged the packing, and made sure Crescent was in lovely shape for the trip, and got on the road in perfectly good time, it hadn’t even been the middle of the afternoon!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d been supposed to stay the night at Papa’s friend’s estate, but as the evening closed in, she couldn’t find any of the signs that she and Crescent were close. She couldn’t quite understand why. Perhaps she was looking on the wrong side of the road? And she thought about staying at some sort of inn or hostelry somewhere (she liked the word hostelry very much, because it had host in it, and also the end part of revelry, and together that just sounded warm and welcoming and lovely to her, and she had vague ideas of enormous featherbeds and fireplaces upstairs and nicely-dressed people in merry contra-dance lines downstairs), but the one village that she passed before evening turned into dark only had one building with a sign hanging out front of it, and that one … well. From well outside she could hear shouting and smell stale and not-very-good beer, and possibly that shed was supposed to be a stable, and the boy sitting on a stump by it ignored her in favor of industriously scratching.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If she was going to get an insect infestation that night, she’d decided, it was going to be a nice honest field insect infestation, not one secondhand from that boy or from any other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By dawn, rolled up in insufficient blankets on the roadside, wet and cold and bruised (she was sure) bone-deep by the endless supply of rocks that the earth was just </span>
  <em>
    <span>pushing</span>
  </em>
  <span> up into her ribs and shoulders and hips and sides, having gotten just enough snatches of sleep to feel even more tired than if she’d stayed up all night, and having been chewed on endlessly and itchily by the bugs that seemed everywhere by the road that night (the puddles in the ditch couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with this) and visited by not one but </span>
  <em>
    <span>three</span>
  </em>
  <span> inquisitive mice, or possibly more given that at least one had gotten into her bread … she wasn’t at all sure she’d made the right decision.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, she cut off the end of the loaf that the mice had chewed on and left it for them, just in case they had little mouselets in their nests that needed providing for, and cut an extra slice or two to wrap up in a handkerchief for herself. Crescent wasn’t entirely enthused about moving at this hour, and honestly neither was Usagi, who wasn’t entirely sure what the hour even was; she had no idea whether the sun went up the sky in the mornings faster or slower than it went down in the afternoons, and the sun was only a glowy, whiter spot in the graying clouds, anyway. But she was cold, cold, cold, and huddling in wet blankets just made everything colder. She found dry clothes buried deep in her packs, and very much wanted to change into them, but she used a skirt to dry off Crescent’s things instead; she couldn’t imagine that wet would be any good for a horse, and the poor thing had to carry her and everything else all at the same time. Besides, she still had </span>
  <em>
    <span>some</span>
  </em>
  <span> dry clothes, and the sun would dry off the rest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And surely she’d be home that night, so the blankets being packed away wet would... would... just get her mother to despair at her (one step worse than shouting) and make her have to apologize to everyone even remotely involved with laundry. Again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So, up earlier than she could remember being, Usagi set off in what she was </span>
  <em>
    <span>certain</span>
  </em>
  <span> was the right direction. And she had to be right! There were only two choices, and one of them had that boy with the scratching, and she didn’t see him or his stump or his shed or his building with the sign, or even his village!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or any village.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or any other travelers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just the road, and the thinning fields with more and more stretches of trees and brush between them, and the graying clouds, darker and darker as the morning wore on. She ate one slice of bread, then the second, and was sure she was nearing starvation, but getting down to get more food out would also mean separating herself from Crescent’s warmth, and even doing that temporarily seemed like a terrible idea. It was supposed to be spring! She promised herself that from now on, anytime she was traveling more than a few hours, she’d pack furs and heavy wool even in the heat of summer, no matter </span>
  <em>
    <span>how</span>
  </em>
  <span> much Rei made fun of her for it. One Never Knew.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time the fields gave up altogether and delivered her into forest, it was beginning to snow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snow made it harder. There was still plenty of light, but the light didn’t help, exactly; it caught on the snowflakes in the air just as much as it caught on the snow on the ground. Tree branches extended over the road, too, casting it into networks of shadow. If all of them had had their proper allotment of leaves, it might have been some shelter, but no, no, not really. Finally she huddled down miserably, hood cast as far forward as she could and arms hugged about herself, and trusted poor Crescent (who had to be at least as cold as she was!) to keep the road.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Papa’s friend’s estate had to be somewhere, didn’t it? Surely Crescent would smell smoke, and cooking, and homelike smells, and have sense enough to go toward the things that promised warmth and food and nice clean stables. Even if it was only some farmer’s cottage, surely they’d be willing to give directions, and perhaps shelter Crescent with their animals and let Usagi come inside to spread out her clothes and blankets, dry out and warm up. Maybe they’d even be willing to share their lunch. It had to be lunch by now! What did farmers eat for lunch? They’d have cows, surely; they’d have milk, and butter they might be willing to let Usagi have some of for the rest of her bread, and perhaps a winter apple or two, and if she was lucky perhaps some early greens… she could share her own food in return, she’d eaten all the sweets yesterday, but she had a sausage only missing a few slices…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A branch caught her hood and pulled it back, dumping snow down the back of her neck and dragging her back both at once; she made a choking sound and came near to falling off Crescent before she managed to get her hands up and yank herself free.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And of course, of </span>
  <em>
    <span>course</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that was when a distant, nonhuman voice soared unsettlingly high and dropped brokenly back down.  Another answered it from farther away, lower and smoother, echoing between the trees.  The third of the howls seemed closer even than the first, its pitch varying in quick, dizzying waves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Usagi had only been sitting up properly, Crescent might even have been able to cope with a wolfpack’s chorus without having more than a case of the nerves.  After all, a pack making noise was a pack not on the hunt.  But her rider was all too clearly unbalanced and not in control.  Perhaps Crescent was worried about Usagi’s falling off, and the pack taking that as a sign of her intruding on their territory.  Perhaps Crescent was only tired, and stressed, and uncertain, and the wolves were one thing too many in a very long day.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever the reason, Crescent’s tolerant calm finally broke, and she </span>
  <em>
    <span>ran</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi yelped, and ducked her head lower, and concentrated on keeping her seat and keeping from being kidnapped or beaten by any other rogue tree-limbs while she felt frantically for the reins she’d dropped. “Who’s taking care of this road?” she wailed, which helped the situation with Crescent not at all. “I don’t remember being ambushed like this on the way out! Did they all </span>
  <em>
    <span>grow</span>
  </em>
  <span> since we left?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fingers found leather, and she managed to coax Crescent into listening to her again and slowing down, at least enough that she felt comfortable sitting up straight again. Sitting up straight reassured Crescent further, slowed her a little more. Which let Usagi breathe, and consider reaching for her hood, and glance around warily for more attack-twigs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were a lot of potential attack-twigs. On nearly every side, though fortunately spaced rather nicely; there was a good bit of underbrush and white-capped low greenery, but the carpet of snow over years of fallen leaves smothered enough to give Crescent room to maneuver between the trees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were so many trees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was so little sign of road.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somehow, Usagi realized, she’d managed to get lost traveling in a straight line.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her parents were never, ever going to let her go anywhere alone again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her first impulse was to follow the hoofprints back, but that idea didn’t work entirely well; the wind, cold to begin with, picked up and started blowing snow directly in her eyes, and any prints they’d made had to be filling in as fast as they were made. Crescent seemed deeply unhappy about forging directly into the wind, too, and Usagi had pity on her (something that had nothing to do with her cold nose and near-freezing eyelashes, and certainly not with the scary noises the wind made, or with remembering the wolves’ territory was back there somewhere) and let her turn around again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Letting Crescent do the deciding where to go seemed like the next best idea, anyway. Usagi didn’t have the faintest clue, and Crescent might at least find water or grass or people. Or go around in circles, yes, but Usagi was unfortunately familiar with her own habit of getting lost, and even the chance of not going around in circles was an improvement. Besides, if Crescent was figuring out where to go, Usagi could concentrate on a more vital concern. Namely, her hood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t just that her hood kept her head and ears warm, after all. It was that her hood kept her hair contained. If that branch had caught her hair instead of the cloth, Crescent would be all on her own right now. Usagi imagined dangling from a tree, wailing, her feet not able to reach the ground, and curious ravens coming to investigate and starting to speculate about when dinner might be ready, the way they did in those creepy foreign songs. Her shudder almost started Crescent off again; Usagi straightened hastily, petted Crescent’s neck to reassure her, and went quickly about getting her hood rearranged and keeping out the snow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was no stopping for lunch; the snow and wind never eased off enough to make it a really safe idea, and somehow the trees were never thick enough to help. Usagi’s stomach growled often enough, but her fingers and ears and nose competed for attention; she huddled down again, further and further, to keep them warm. Poor Crescent had to be miserable. Thirst was a worse problem, certainly for Usagi, and she guessed for both of them – she’d had enough to drink to wash down the bread, but nothing since, and the day was just wearing on endlessly. The first guess she had about the amount of time that had to have passed was not the angle of the shadows – the clouds and snow meant that there weren’t any clear shadows, only the haze of white and gray and the dark slashes of trees – but when she realized slowly that it wasn’t only hard to see because of the snow. Night was coming in, and the wind picking up with it. It was only going to get worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just as Usagi was drawing in a breath to wail in despair, not thinking about what that was going to do to Crescent’s exhausted and frozen state of mind, she caught sight of a shadow that seemed ... different. A geometrical gray, straight lines, with – better yet! - no trees intruding upon it. A field, perhaps, that might have a farmer? She couldn’t smell smoke, but she couldn’t smell anything at this point except the inside of her own hood. Or a cliffside, that might offer shelter from the wind somewhere, or perhaps even a cave? Surely any bears would have gone back into hibernation for the night. Or if they hadn’t, well, maybe they’d take pity on her, or perhaps being eaten by a bear might be more comfortable than staying outside anyhow. She tried the very gentlest of nudges, and Crescent lifted her head a little, and then somehow found the strength to pick up her pace and turn toward that gray where for a little while no tree-trunks or underbrush interrupted the snow at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t until Crescent was actually pacing through the gate that Usagi understood: it wasn’t a field, or a cliffside. It was a wall, one that blocked the teeth of the wind and let the snow fall more lightly down rather than being whipped into every possible gap in clothing, and the empty space was an avenue leading into an estate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Perhaps we’ve finally found Papa’s friend after all,” Usagi whispered to Crescent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crescent seemed to care much less about Papa’s friend, and much more about making her way through the closing dimness of evening toward the promise of shelter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Here, trees on either side actually intercepted the snowfall. She could see a little more. Open space – gardens, perhaps? - with little groves interspersed in them, and what seemed like a pond with a running stream. Their course followed the stream up, till they at last came on the infinite blessing of walls. Walls with roofs attached. Buildings. Usagi seriously considered going into one and never leaving, and to help this, Crescent paused in front of one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Its door was open. Warmth poured out, and while Usagi had trouble focusing, there was light, and the door was immense. Space enough for both of them. Clever, clever Crescent had found a stable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi coaxed muscles that seemed half-frozen to move, joints to break the layer of ice that had clearly formed under her skin, and after more long seconds than she would have wanted to count, managed to slide only somewhat awkwardly off of Crescent’s saddle and stagger a couple of awkward, painful steps to her head. She paused there to let Crescent get used to her being that close (so declared Usagi to herself, it of course having nothing to do with how much it hurt to move when she’d ridden so much and so unaccustomed), then led her poor, chilled, exhausted, loyal, amazing, brilliant mount inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A litany of sympathy and praise did not actually help Crescent’s physical condition any, but once Usagi had managed to close the door, it was all that Crescent got for the first couple of minutes. At least she seemed to understand </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span> her rider might have sunk to the floor, awkwardly propped against the wall, and moaned breathless half-formed words for a little while. And long experience meant that Crescent also didn’t pay attention when the moaning turned into whining, then outright complaints, before (no servants having conveniently arrived to see to everything) Usagi hauled herself upright, and finally started freeing Crescent from her tack. Packs were piled by the door; saddle and bridle removed. Usagi fussed worriedly over her condition, but at least she’d been a light burden, and as if whoever lived here had somehow been expecting company, there were towels to dry her off ready at hand, and water already warmed against the temperatures outside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The water was almost as precious for Usagi as for her horse. She traded off which of them she was caring for at any given moment, digging battered and crumbling bread out of her pack and nibbling at it after cleaning Crescent’s hooves, sneaking another towel to trade for her increasingly soaked cloak and hood partway through brushing her down. Finally, when she’d snugged Crescent into a stall (there were so many stalls! And none of them seemed to be occupied!) and made sure she had a measure of grain and plenty of hay, she faced the most dread decision.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She could just drink more of the warm water, and eat her bread and sausage, and nestle into a place right here. It was certainly warm enough, and compared to the night before, it would be amazingly comfortable. She could, she could, she could.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If she hadn’t eased the door open a crack and peeked out at the weather, and seen that the snow had stopped, and caught a whiff of something sweet as one of Makoto’s pastries, she would have. But as it was, without even thinking of her hood or of her packs or of cleaning herself up and making herself presentable, she stepped out into the evening with a soft little crunch underfoot. Towel around her shoulders, she made her way up past the other outbuildings toward the lit windows to her left and the source of the gentle breeze carrying that bakery-smell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, as she approached, she thought she saw a castle, towers high above her housing firelit window-slits against the darkness of the sky, and the water part of a living moat whose drawbridge she’d already crossed. Then she blinked, and squeezed her eyes shut in a second harder blink, and everything was all pale in the darkness, a vast expanse of facades and columns and courtyards, the bright sound of a thoroughly unfrozen fountain tossing water into the air with a merry carelessness even in the growing night.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If this was Papa’s friend’s estate, she thought, then Papa’s friend was much wealthier and more important than Papa had made him out to be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She made her way carefully toward the chateau, but as she went on it grew easier; in the courtyard the wings of the building seemed to have kept the snow from falling, and when she reached the great stone steps that led up to the entrance, there was no frost or ice on their polished surfaces. The door opened at her touch, and though it was still dark and silent and there were no more people about here than there had been in the stable, the air held a pleasant warmth that soothed her as much as, and more gently than, the stable’s had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello?” she called. “Is there anyone at home? Please, I don’t mean to intrude, but may I stay a little while?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No-one called back. No bells rang. No challenge was given. No scuffling of distant motion. Even her own words sank into the quiet and were swallowed up, muffled and covered as surely as if they’d been laid down under the snowfall out where the walls gave no protection.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi drew another breath to call out again, but couldn’t quite make herself do it, in case the quiet came for her voice altogether instead of just her words. Instead, she made her way carefully through the entrance hall, looking for somewhere she might be able to shed her boots, and perhaps also her borrowed towel. Furniture loomed to one side and another, and she threaded her way between and around the pieces as carefully as she could, painfully aware of her own tendency to trip over things in the light, let alone in the dark. Here and there, candles burned lonely in the night, and she used their light to find a doorway into another splendidly furnished room, then another, then a long gallery, all empty of life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There had to be someone, somewhere. She’d smelled something baking. Determined, Usagi pressed on, sniffing at the air from time to time to be sure that she was going the right direction; but as she moved through the place, direction seemed to become a far more vague concept. Once, she passed through a room that looked out over the courtyard with the fountains on her right; but the balcony stood high above the courtyard, and she was certain she hadn’t climbed stairs. And the next door took her through a place that yielded on her left into a colonnade along the same courtyard. And she was particularly certain she hadn’t, between the two, gone down stairs and back through the entrance hall to cross the entire building.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After that, she determined to make her way back to the stables; but turning around, irritatingly, did not bring her back to the colonnade. Or to the entrance hall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally, she tucked herself into a smaller room (no looming shadows of enormous wardrobes, or display cases, or whatever they were! No ballroom floors that didn’t echo the way an empty ballroom ought! No great stairs spiralling up into nothing!) where the candleflames were joined by a pleasant little fire, whose smoke smelled faintly of spices and made her stomach even more convinced that it had clearly been empty forever. There was a couch not far from it; she took off her boots and put them and her borrowed towel near the fire to dry, and curled herself in to rest. Perhaps someone would come across her and ask what in the world she was doing. She almost hoped for that. Being shouted at would be a pleasant reminder of home, right now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The couch was pleasant to lie on, soft enough to yield under her, not so soft that she felt as if she were drowning in it, and the warmth and flicker and soft sounds of the fire were enough to overcome her hunger and loneliness and let her drowse. Her dreams were full of warmth, too, gardens in the early summer before the full heat came on, lying stretched out in dappled sunlight and lazy comfort; her head was pillowed on someone’s lap, someone who smelled of spices and woodsmoke and roses. She had no idea who it was, but that seemed to be all right. She was fairly sure they were napping, too. Sometimes she thought she heard whispers on the wind, but they never had the malicious edge or the nasty stifled giggle of gossip, so she let them be. Maybe they were the flowers. Flowers seemed to have the right to whisper, as far as she could tell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the smell of cooking intruded on the garden, she breathed more deeply to savor it; but it was the actual sniffing at the air that brought her awake, blinking, and startled that her stomach hadn’t woken her sooner. Not to mention her ears. Because someone had to have been in the room; a small table had been drawn up beside the couch, and filled with covered dishes of a silvery metal whose scent had drifted into her dreams.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello?” she called at once. “Thank you! Thank you for letting me stay here, and thank you for the food!” She hesitated, then added, “Is this all for me, or will you come out and eat with me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silence reigned. Well, no. Silence loomed. The laden table reigned. After a moment more of no answer and no sound of footsteps or rustle of skirts or unfamiliar cough, Usagi bowed to its commands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The closest dish to her was a thick pottage straight out of her daydreams about farmers’ cooking, barley and peas and lentils and tender greens brightened by garden herbs and an unfamiliar savoriness despite the lack of meat. She found a salad of crushed spring vegetables and salted cheese, and strips of veal in a sauce of wine and honey, and little loaves of white bread, and cheeses and sliced ham, and beans spiced with coriander, and a fillet of some sea-fish roasted with a peppery vinaigrette, and a blissfully sweet crustless tart of eggs and chopped nuts, and a dish of cooked melons and a bowl of astoundingly early peaches. There was a jug of a hot drink, a heavily watered and spiced wine, and a cooler one, that had the sharp tang of vinegar; she wrinkled her nose, but at least that one wasn’t going to make her even more confused. And it suited the rest of the meal startlingly well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eating was a little more of a challenge. The spoon she understood, and after a moment’s searching she turned up a familiar enough knife, but there was a marked lack of fork. She hesitated, then tried stabbing bits of meat with the knife; that worked well enough, but the chopped nuts weren’t as amiable about it, and while the fish didn’t flake away too easily, it made her fret. When she found the precious little glass cup of water and the clean cloth folded beside it, she decided that fingers were the appropriate etiquette here after all. No-one appeared out of the darkness to correct her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wouldn’t have been possible to eat everything at the table, even with Usagi’s appetite; it would’ve fed four or five people easily, more if they hadn’t been hungry as long as she had. Even when she cleaned her fingers and her mouth conscientiously before shifting her plate to put her head down </span>
  <em>
    <span>just for a moment</span>
  </em>
  <span>, she hoped absently that the rest of the food wouldn’t go to waste.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she woke for the second time, she was stretched out gently on the couch again; her hair had been teased out and combed without waking her (and that, even more than the strangeness of the way the rooms lay, convinced her that there was magic involved) and braided again to keep it from tangling while she slept. The table was still nearby, this time with eggs cooked with pine nuts, pancakes with dates and honey, and to her vast relief, utterly familiar milk rather than the wine or vinegar drink. There was still a notable lack of silverware suited to pick things up with, but Usagi had the idea now, and her only problem was the difficulty of de-stickying her fingers afterward. The amount of rubbing with a moistened cloth was just enough activity to keep her from devolving immediately into an after-breakfast (at least, she hoped it was breakfast) nap. Instead, she called out, “Thank you?” into the silence, listened for the now-expected lack of response, and got up to retrieve her boots and the abandoned towel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her boots were dry and in a startlingly pristine condition; she wasn’t sure they’d looked that good when they were new. The towel had been whisked away and replaced by her cloak and hood, dry and looking splendid and boasting brand-new embroidery to frame her face with a band of curling red ribbons and golden crescent moons that sparkled and danced in the firelight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you!” she repeated, but again, there was nothing at all, except perhaps the whisper of a breeze on the far side of the room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She let out a breath, and began to search through the silent maze of the place again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she came upon rooms that held windows or doors or gave way to outdoor balconies, now, the sun shone in brightly, banishing the loneliness and vague threat of the night before. Furnishings that had only loomed in the dark now showed themselves as having elegant lines, the rich colors of exotic woods, fascinatingly dyed and patterned upholstery, intricate carvings and delicate paintings and enamel and stained-glass. Crystal and precious metals glinted everywhere; she was steadily convinced that the pale dishes she’d been served on truly had been silver. The air smelled clean and pleasant and fresh, and felt like spring on her skin, for all that she’d expected a bite of cold or at the very least smokiness from the fires to allay it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And all the while, she heard no sound but her own footfalls, or the thump of her tripping over a table-leg and catching herself, or her murmur of startled delight when she found a portrait of a tousled, energetic red-headed girl in old-fashioned clothing that Usagi thought looked as if she would have fit right in at her afternoons with her friends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thought made her think further, imagining what Makoto would do with the spices and fruits and strange fish from the meal the night before. How Rei would admire the stark elegance of a suite she’d peeked into, the way the minimal ebony furniture would match her hair and be a perfect backdrop for the startling red she favored for her clothes; how Minako would have delighted in another one, a confused glory of treasures and gadgets, where a clock chimed the hour with a dance of miniature figures beside a complicated and gleaming jewelry-box that Usagi had found three hidden drawers and pockets in. Aimé wouldn’t have to listen to the two of them arguing over whose preference in décor was better. He’d be off in the immense library, wheeling the ladders between shelves to examine the topmost volumes, climbing stairs to the second and third level to study not merely the books but the gold-framed celestial globe and the dizzying rings of the armillary sphere. Mama would have joined him, to do Papa’s and the household’s books, and to finally have the chance to study the way she wished Usagi would. Her Papa would love studying the portraits and paintings and all the tiny bits of decoration, the particular flare of a carved leaf that fooled the eye into thinking it was deeper than it was, the hunting scene that wrapped all the way around a cabinet, the … just everything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wanted to bring them all there. Even if it meant bringing Shingo, too; he could just as well make trouble for everyone there as he could anywhere else. If there really wasn’t anyone living in the strange place – it would be just as much theirs as anyone else’s, wouldn’t it? And if there was someone there – well, they’d be just as likely to take care of the others as they would Usagi. Besides, maybe having so many people there would make them come out, either to say hello or to chase them away, and then Usagi could thank them properly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(The idea that being chased away was not a good position from which to be thanking someone did not, of course, occur to her.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bringing them there meant finding her way out, though. Usagi lifted her chin, determined, and the very next room that opened onto a gallery, she stepped through the doors and out between the columns, pulling her cloak together against the cold.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A thrush twitched its little brown head, looking up at her from the grass before her, and then flitted hastily back among the hedges that marked off the garden beyond. Its twittering song roused a chorus of other remarks, stretching off both left and right. The sun warmed her face and chest in a way that even the sweet fire of the night before could never have dreamed of; a breeze brought her the inviting scent of flowers in bloom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was no sign of ice, or frost, or unmelted snow left in a shadow, or even of the ground squishing underfoot from meltwater.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is all very confusing,” Usagi said out loud, and started down along the path, peeking into the gaps in the hedges in the hope of finding the stable. She found flowers instead, at first: daffodils bright and pure as if they wanted to offer the white and gold of the light right back to the sun, primroses pale yellow and pink, delicate red poppies with their shadowed centers, a shaded area to sit so magnificently surrounded by lilacs that Usagi wondered how anyone could breathe for the perfume. Coming around a corner of the great house, she found a vista of green and paths, and more distantly groves of trees green with spring leaves or white with flowers; but the water here was great oval fountain ponds in sunken lawns, rather than the running water she’d seen before. Perhaps she was on the wrong side of the estate. Perhaps she was on the wrong estate altogether, and the room had let her out of it somewhere on the far side of the country.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then the breeze brought her the scent, and she didn’t care which side of the country she was on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The scent was like the one in her dream; roses, but as much beyond the roses in their garden at home as the sunlight was beyond the woeful candles flickering in the dark rooms the night before. Usagi breathed it in, deep, and then held her breath for her next double dozen steps, till her eyes began to widen and she screwed up her face and the pressure at the back of her nose finally became unbearable. A breath out, and a breath in, and it was only the green sweetness of the gardens, and what she’d loved so much a moment ago was suddenly nowhere near enough. Just one whiff was like having a pastry put in front of her and then stolen away! She turned frantically, trying to sort out where the breeze had carried the rose-smell from, and decided – there; across the approach to the house and past the first fountain, the tall blue-green wall of needles past the short trim box hedge.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whoever lives here must keep an army of gardeners,” she sighed as she jumped down the short retaining wall on one side of the lawn between them, and crossed the grass. “And take a carriage to go from breakfast to dinner.” She hitched up her skirts most inelegantly to climb the wall on the far side, and added, “And carry a </span>
  <em>
    <span>map</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The owner did not make an appearance to challenge this. If there was one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finding an opening in the tall evergreen hedge was easy enough; it faced right out onto the approach. But from there it twisted into its own little labyrinth, like a miniature version of inside: too complicated to make any sense, and, Usagi suspected, rearranging itself behind her, just for spite. She made a face, and guessed at turns, and sniffed at the air. Most of it was a pleasantly piney scent, but when she caught half a breath of the roses, she went that way; and as she did, she found that the trimmed branches grew ragged, sprouting into the paths, climbing above their companions. The worse it got, though, the stronger the smell she was chasing. She had to be going the right way. She had to!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she pushed a tuft of greenery out of her way and it bit her hand, she knew for certain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. That was, she yelped and jumped back and shrieked and peered at her hand and put the thorn-prick up to her mouth and sucked at it exactly the way that her Mama told her not to. Then, when nothing came either to rescue her or to bite her again at the shriek, she took a more careful look at the greenery, and found that in among the needles was an extra branch, a mostly barren one with a few serrated leaves and more than a few prickles. She wrapped her cloak around her hand, pushed it aside more carefully, and went on in serene confidence and just a little bit of whining. After all, she hurt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The labyrinth didn’t end at a proper center. It ended in a growing tangle of rosebush, stretching out either side of the path and then coming together to clog it. The hedge itself was half dead there, sagging under the weight of the roses climbing over them. Usagi felt just a little sorry for it, but mostly Usagi felt entranced –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were so </span>
  <em>
    <span>many</span>
  </em>
  <span> roses. No wonder she’d dreamed about them. The end of the path was almost solid color, a few glimpses of green leaves among twining arcs of color: cup-like flowers made and filled solidly with pink petals, puffs of white, splashy stripes of both, deep purple blossoms as precisely made as a brooch, pinwheels of lesser crimsons, and most of all, brilliant reds, warm living nuanced reds that would make Rei long for what her dyes couldn’t do. It took a great deal of care – the individual roses’ scents interfered with each other so much! – but those, Usagi determined, were the </span>
  <em>
    <span>exact</span>
  </em>
  <span> source of the rose scent that had comforted her in her sleep the night before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She stood there for minutes, breathing, breathing, eyes closed. Trying to imagine what they made her think of. Trying to imagine ever getting her fill.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t till she realized that the sun had crossed over to the other side of her face that she blinked her eyes open again, stunned in equal measure that so much time had passed, and that she’d woken up before noon at all. And stunned all over again to see the roses before her, as if her memory hadn’t been able to hold the variety, or perhaps the color.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The roses at home were so </span>
  <em>
    <span>sad</span>
  </em>
  <span> compared to this. What if Makoto might not want to come back with her? What if Mama and Papa told her she </span>
  <em>
    <span>couldn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> come back?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi bit her lip, uncertain for a moment … but there were so many, and they were hidden so far back, and even the army of gardeners had given up here. She examined one stem of the reddest roses – not the brightest color, but the most vivid, the deepest, the one that made her think most of the dream and the way it made her heart content – and, utterly careful of the thorns, carefully worked back from the young blossom. Mako had shown her cuttings, and talked about the number of something-or-other they needed to have; Usagi couldn’t remember that, but she could remember how long it had been against her arm, and she guessed from that, and then added more for how much stronger these stems seemed to be. She wished she’d taken the knife from the breakfast table, but there was nothing to be done about that, and it would have seemed impolite, anyway. Instead, she peered carefully at the thorns, and found places she could put her hands, and tried to break off the stem.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To her startlement, it came away as smoothly and easily as she could have wished, without the twisting and wringing and bending and re-bending she expected. Not a petal dropped from the rose. She blinked at it, and smiled –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Behind her, there was the loud, sharp snap of a branch cracking. Under the weight of a bear. That was wearing echoing armored boots.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi’s throat locked into a squeak. She was terrified to turn; she was terrified not to. Carefully, protecting the rose, she turned her head. Her hood blocked her vision. She had to turn her whole body.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What she saw was not a bear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What she saw was not a human being, either.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He might have looked like a human from a distance, from the waist up, except that he was too tall. But the wild brown mane that curled about his face and shoulders, while parted and combed, had horns protruding from it. Dark, banded horns, that curved back to present a solid striking surface, then twisted up and out again so that the viciously sharp points could be brought into play. His face was clean-shaven, but his lips had pulled back from teeth that offered fangs both above and below, like some great cat’s. His eyes were like a cat’s, too, slit-pupiled, and their irises halfway lit from within. But not some calm green or even alarming alien gold. They were too-bright as a droplet of welling arterial blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The only thing that kept her from fainting dead away at the sight of him, or at the deep, growling snarl he met her with, was that even despite all these things, despite the furred ears twitching below the horns, despite the lashing tufted tail and the clawed things he had in place of hands and the horridly wrong way his legs bent and the black-taloned paw that was his left foot and the cloven hoof that was his right …</span>
</p><p>
  <span>… he was wearing a cloak no more unusual than she was, and a white linen shirt tied neatly at his throat, and the details of whatever served him for was-that-even-a-knee were obscured by carefully tailored brown trousers.</span>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://64.media.tumblr.com/2c07c4a857126abbd8da6e4dcea5fdd3/31641cc46cc29384-09/s1280x1920/8071ae67ac8f99f64f9814fa0db4e302e8799376.png"></a>
</p><p>
  <span>He was wearing clothes. That meant that he was civilized. Didn’t it?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hoped it didn’t only mean that this place’s invisible owner liked putting ridiculous things on their pets the way her Papa occasionally had to paint ladies’ lapdogs in matching costumes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The beast – no, the Beast – gave voice to another terrible snarl. The squeak locked in Usagi’s throat made such an attempt to escape that her eyes bulged. She stepped backward without thinking, and thorned branches pushed her cloak against her back. There wouldn’t be any escape that way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What gave you the idea that you had a right to gather my roses?” The words would have been a roar, if the Beast hadn’t had to space out the words in order to speak clearly. He spat each of them out, each syllable a careful maneuver around his fangs to keep from tearing at the inside of his own mouth. “Wasn’t it enough that I let you shelter in my home? Gave your mount space where my own might stay? Sent you food and drink, and had your belongings seen to? And how do you show your gratitude? You </span>
  <em>
    <span>steal my flowers!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Y-your flowers?” At least the stumbling words let Usagi breathe again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Beast made a sound, and Usagi wasn’t sure if he was about to tear her throat out or just laughing at her in spite. “My flowers. My </span>
  <em>
    <span>roses</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The one treasure I guard most closely. Of course they’re mine. Who else would dare remain here more than one night?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi imagined encountering those claws and fangs and horns in the middle of the night – not to mention the gleaming red eyes – and shuddered. But breathing was working with her again, and she drew a deeper breath, holding it for just a moment to give her strength, and took a careful step forward. Then another. Somehow, the thorns let go of her cloak without a ripping sound, or even a snapping thread. She tried for a third, but there were claws, there were claws, and tears of fright welled up in her eyes. Her legs wouldn’t hold her; she dropped to her knees there between the hedges, barren ground a little gentler than pavement would have been.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hesitantly, she held up the flower in one hand. Her other hand wrapped under her wrist to help keep it lifted, in case her shoulder or elbow decided her legs had the right idea. She managed to tip her head back, letting the tears leak more easily out of the corners of her eyes, and look up at the Beast. “Please, sir – I’m so sorry. I truly didn’t know. I couldn’t find anyone! There wasn’t anyone to ask, and there wasn’t anyone to tell me I shouldn’t be here – and everything else is so amazing, I didn’t know one rose would – would – I didn’t mean to make you angry! I’m sorry!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>None of that seemed to make the Beast any happier. His right hoof pawed at the ground; the talons on the other side sank deeper into the dirt. “What </span>
  <em>
    <span>did</span>
  </em>
  <span> you mean to do, then, little thief? Do you take things at the market, or pocket trinkets in other houses, just because there </span>
  <em>
    <span>isn’t anyone to ask</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” Usagi yelped. “No, I wouldn’t! I just – please, most people who prize their flowers like that don’t leave them overgrown and tangled! I have a friend who loves flowers, who loves roses so much, who’s so good with them – and these are so beautiful – I thought she’d love them, and grow them, and take care of them, and if they’re magnificent like this they’d be even more magnificent with her – and I was supposed to be home </span>
  <em>
    <span>yesterday</span>
  </em>
  <span>, she’s going to be so worried, I wanted to do </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> to make her happy – and the roses looked like they were just </span>
  <em>
    <span>there</span>
  </em>
  <span>, like something nobody cared about, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>they</span>
  </em>
  <span> deserve to be cared about, too –“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She sniffled. “But you </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> care about them. I don’t know why you don’t take care of them, if you – you...” And the words trailed off, and she blinked up at the Beast, and then turned her head to look at the riot of color behind her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her voice turned very small. Not, this time, out of fear. “Oh,” she said. “What – what happened – if you hurt so much you don’t want anyone else to come here, and don’t take care of them yourself? What happened to make the roses make you hurt so much?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The absence of a roar hung in the air. Silence lasted for seconds, until finally, somewhere in the middle distance, a bird decided that it might be safe to chirp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi peeked back, very slowly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Beast still glared at her with his feral eyes, but his hands had drawn back and closed almost into fists, folding the claws out of immediate sight. His frown didn’t hide all of his fangs. It was still an improvement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Very well,” he growled at last. “If you’re such an honest girl. Here is the price of hurting my roses. Go home. Give your friend her rose. Reassure your family. And make your peace with them, and say your good-byes. I will see to it your mare is well taken care of, and give you a mount to take you home safely. In a month’s time, he will bring you back here. If you try to stay away, if you try to hide, if you try to run, I will come and find you myself, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> will bring you back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Indignation welled up, pushing both fear and concern aside before Usagi could think better of it. “That’s not fair!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Isn’t it?” Sharp teeth and long fangs showed again for a moment. “I could have left you in the storm, little thief. I could have let you freeze to death, die both of cold and of despair. I chose to save you instead. You owe me your life. The price of hurting my roses is that </span>
  <em>
    <span>I choose to collect.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi swallowed. She tried to argue. She wanted so much to argue! But ... it had been so cold. And it had been so awful, even when she found the stable, even warming back up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she’d have a month. Minako was cleverer than anyone, even if she didn’t always look like it. Aimé knew so much more than she did. Rei would push them both to find a way out, and Mako would keep them all on track, even if she’d be so very mad with Usagi first.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And even if they didn’t ... unless the Beast meant that he intended to roast her for dinner, which seemed a little unlikely if he was telling her to go home for a month first, then if Usagi had to come back, she might be able to find out more about the roses. About what had happened. About why she’d been able to smell them in her dreams. There were so many mysteries there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she certainly wouldn’t starve.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally, without saying a word, she nodded.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Makoto: An argument; unexpected gifts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“And that’s what happened.” Usagi sniffled particularly pathetically, and cuddled her empty cup against her chest. “When I got back out of the hedge maze, the horse was there, and he let me get to know him and I found a wall and got up and he took me straight home. But I have to go back. I promised.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You </span>
  <em>
    <span>idiot</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Rei leveled a finger at her. “You didn’t promise anything! You didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>say</span>
  </em>
  <span> anything! And he didn’t have any right to threaten you like that! You didn’t make a </span>
  <em>
    <span>bargain</span>
  </em>
  <span> for his help, he just gave it to you, he can’t try to take it </span>
  <em>
    <span>back</span>
  </em>
  <span> or say you </span>
  <em>
    <span>owe</span>
  </em>
  <span> him for it!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But I </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> owe him!” Usagi protested. “And it’s the right thing to –”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Usagi, do you even have two thoughts in your head, or did you spend all of them on your hair?” Rei pushed herself up to her feet for the sole purpose of spinning dramatically to turn her attention on a fresh target. “Aimé! Who’s the best lawyer we can find?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé blinked owlishly. “I ... don’t know if there are any lawyers willing to take on an action against a magical monster,” he said. “It’s not usually their sort of thing.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei scowled at him. “You’re hopeless.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“People look to other specialists for things like that,” Aimé offered reasonably. “Could your grandfather help?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How should I know!” She rounded on Usagi again. “Is it a curse?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Usagi stared up at her, blue eyes shimmering with a new resurgence of tears. “I don’t know! He didn’t say, and I couldn’t ask, and – and – maybe he’ll tell me when I come back? Or maybe he was just born like that. Or hatched? Or just ... maybe he woke up in a forest one day and that was that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé said thoughtfully, “His house was magical too, wasn’t it? Perhaps he’s some sort of fairy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei stared at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé spread his hands. “If we’re considering magic,” he said, “we ought to consider all the magical alternatives. Especially the ones we don’t know very much about. Fairy stories have been around for a very long time, and we should keep them in mind.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If we’re considering magic,” Minako put in, finally rousing herself from her pastry-induced quiet, “we ought to consider the rose. Oughtn’t we?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The rose?” Rei repeated.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minako waggled eyebrows at her. “The one Usagi took, that got the Beast mad in the first place? She wasn’t carrying it when you got her inside. Did it get put down somewhere while you were getting her warm clothes? We should look at it! And smell it. Maybe there’s a secret in it somewhere.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s right,” Aimé breathed. “She wasn’t holding anything when we helped her dismount. So what happened to it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto started to push herself up, then considered the cat sleeping in her lap and leaned carefully instead. “Maybe it’s in one of these,” she said, dragging the closer of the saddlebags toward her and unbuckling the straps holding it shut. “It’d be awfully crushed by now, I’m afrai--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She forgot to finish the word.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The reflections from the contents of the bag danced across her face, glimmers of brilliant gold, points of colored light from impossible jewels. Speechless, she reached carefully and lifted a golden tiara set with a cabochon emerald, holding it up for the others to see.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei and Minako scrambled out of their chairs to gather around her. “That’s beautiful!” Minako pronounced, taking the tiara directly out of Makoto’s hands and placing it carefully on her forehead. “It matches your eyes. You should keep it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not </span>
  <em>
    <span>mine</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Makoto protested.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Usagi swallowed. “Well,” she said, keeping in her seat, “it’s mine then, isn’t it? And </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> say you should keep it.” She tipped her chin upward, taking a deep breath and at last managing to regain some visible sign of her stubbornness. “Minaaaaako, I can’t see through your head, what else is in there? Are my clothes okay?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minako plunged her hands into the bag, heedless of the risk of being stabbed by a brooch. “I don’t think there’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>any</span>
  </em>
  <span> of your clothes in here,” she reported. “It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>all</span>
  </em>
  <span> jewelry! Right down till it gets down to ... um. There’s a lot of loose stuff in the bottom.” She settled back on her heels, bringing up two handsful of bright coins and unset gems. Pearls dribbled off the sides of her grip, hitting the floor with a little bounce and roll. In Makoto’s lap, Artemis blinked eyes open and batted at them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Makoto told the cat, seizing at that hint of normality against the impossible riches and everything they implied about the truth of Usagi’s story. “You can’t eat them. They’re bad for you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You said that about the chocolate, too,” Minako objected.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei gave her a look that made Makoto expect to see wisps of smoke rising from Minako’s hair and clothing. “Never mind the cat,” Rei said. “If that’s all gold? That bag by itself must weigh more than twice what Usagi does! How did we not notice that getting everything up the stairs? How did we not </span>
  <em>
    <span>fall over</span>
  </em>
  <span> getting them off the horse?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m the one who carried them,” Makoto protested. “They weren’t that heavy!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minako elbowed Artemis out of Makoto’s lap, ignoring the cat’s yowl, and dropped the two handfuls of gold into her lap. Makoto yelped at the impact; it yanked hard at her skirts. “It’s that heavy now!” Minako singsonged.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei nudged the bag. It slid obediently. “-- not in the bag, it’s not,” she said warily. “Should we exorcise it? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Do</span>
  </em>
  <span> I need to talk to my grandfather?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Artemis isn’t hissing,” Minako said, apparently blithely oblivious to the fact that the cat was indeed hissing. At her. “It must be okay. Cats know these things.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei threw a gold coin at her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé had slid out of his own seat during their antics, and now was down on one knee by the second bag, undoing the last of the buckles. “Perhaps your clothes are in this one,” he said to Usagi, and opened it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The scent that swept out of it made the entire fuss about the gold seem absolutely irrelevant to Makoto. She closed her eyes to pay more attention, to breathe it in the more deeply. It conjured images in her mind of flowered meadows, of elegant towers of white marble, of a living richness that grew from the best of soils: an endless bounty that enriched the earth it grew from rather than draining it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think this must be yours, too,” Aimé said quietly, and the weight that joined the coins in Makoto’s lap was negligible beside them, and a thousand times more real.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time she opened her eyes to the rose, Rei was helping Aimé unpack Usagi’s clothes from the bag, and also clothes that none of them had ever seen. Gowns in shimmering colors: a brilliant gold-shot orange that no dye Makoto had ever heard of could have produced, Rei’s favorite red matching her hooded cloak precisely, a blue that would have suited someone perfectly to dance with Aimé and an ensemble of coat and waistcoat and breeches so that Aimé could match his dance partner in turn, a green that seemed to have taken its color from the tiara’s emerald and that ought to fit Makoto’s height.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This isn’t possible,” said Rei, as she held up a white-and-gold bodice to Usagi, eyeing it critically against her. “This looks like it fits. These couldn’t possibly fit. Well, maybe yours, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>did</span>
  </em>
  <span> fall asleep in someone else’s house, and you </span>
  <em>
    <span>could</span>
  </em>
  <span> sleep through someone taking your measurements, but how in the world would they have sewn it in time?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minako clutched the flame-orange to herself and did a little spin, the skirt flaring out from her body – not nearly as much as if she were actually wearing it, but some. “Why are you complaining?” she sang out. “You could get handed a miracle by a band of angels, and you’d tug at their wings and ask if they were glued.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Angels are one thing,” Rei groused. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>People</span>
  </em>
  <span> are quite another.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But we’ve already conceded magic,” Aimé said. “It’s important not to imagine that magic can literally do </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but it’s also important not to pretend that things aren’t happening that clearly are.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And what’s clearly happening is that a manipulative jerk was already using guilt and threats to get at Usagi, and now he’s using bribes, too.” Rei pitched the bodice back at the bag. “We should put all of this away. All of it. Well, except for Usagi’s actual clothes. And send it back to him on his precious horse.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s easy for you to say.” Minako paused in her attempt to dance with a dress. “Your father’s the mayor. You have money. My father’s nobility. We have money </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> lands. But Usagi’s and Aimé’s families are professionals, and Makoto doesn’t have anything at all. It’s not fair to dangle being on really even terms with us in front of them, then declare that because you’re not happy with where it comes from, we’re yanking it away.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei stared at her. Aimé shifted awkwardly. Usagi bit her lip, visibly uncertain whether she’d need to leap to her feet and defend Minako bodily.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally Rei let out her breath. “I hate it when you think,” she told Minako, and picked the bodice back up again. “-- we should unpack these, either way, anyhow. So they don’t crease.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes!” Usagi leaped upon that. “We should unpack them and, and take care of them, and, um. And … figure out what’s there? So I know what to tell Mama and Papa about it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re going to tell your parents that you met a magic Beast in a magic chateau and he gave you a magic horse with magic bags and fancy clothes and a ridiculous amount of money?” asked Rei, dubious.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why not?” asked Minako. “We have a magic cat. That’s a start.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto looked over at Artemis, who had settled irritably by her knee. He looked remarkably un-magic; as opposite the rose she held as it was possible to be. Perhaps the magic was in his not having scratched Minako’s hands off yet. “We can unpack,” she suggested, “but maybe we should wait to make any decisions about who to tell what, and what to do, until tomorrow? Usagi’s been through so much today, and the rest of us have all been a little stressed ourselves. If anyone would like to stay overnight, I can make up beds, it’s not as if anyone will be surprised --”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Everyone but Aimé wanted to stay overnight, and Aimé promised to be back in the morning. Makoto stacked the coins from her lap, and tucked the rose into her hair and then into a vase for safekeeping, and helped with (oversaw, really) the unpacking, and then saw to it that the girls ate more than pastries and chocolate, and that beds were made up for them, which Rei and Minako both promptly ignored in favor of spending the night in Usagi’s room. Makoto joined them for the first few hours, but they were all still whispering and laughing, planning bizarre fantasias of what they would do with the gold (Minako was convinced that they could somehow use it to meet and woo handsome princes, but conceded that marrying said handsome princes might be awkward for keeping their afternoon meetings as regular as they were), when she excused herself on the grounds of actually wanting to get up in the morning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She did go to her room, at least. She washed up, and combed her hair, and changed to her roughest outfit, then packed the two changes of clothes that were her own, and the green gown and golden tiara that Usagi had declared hers. She added a few packets of herbs she’d dried from the garden herself, and her sewing things, and the grafting knife one of the gardeners had given her for her own. Her cloak and winter hat and scarf and gloves went on, too, along with packing her shoes and putting on sturdy boots, and whisking the rose from its vase.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then she went down to the stable. It didn’t take her long to find the stunning stallion the Beast had sent Usagi home on; he hadn’t been given Crescent’s place thanks to his sheer size, but there were only a handful of possibilities.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She stood outside his stall and looked at him, quiet and serious, then tucked the rose into her hair again. Out of the way. Where he was relatively unlikely to try to eat it, she hoped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hello,” she said, quietly, hoping she wouldn’t wake anyone sleeping in the stable to watch the horses. “I … I know I’m not the one your person sent you here for. And I’m not a very good rider. But if you’re not too tired, and if you’re willing to go out at night, I’d like to go and meet him. Would that be all right? Are you in good condition for it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The horse snorted quietly, and nudged at the door of his stall. It swung open without Makoto having touched it. She couldn’t be surprised.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stood still as she fetched his tack, and gingerly put it on him; stamped his foot when she tried to fasten the saddle, then did it again when she hastily loosened it, till at last she worked out that it had been too loose to begin with. She didn’t try to lead him out to the mounting block. He led her to it, instead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She guessed better than to try to guide him in any other way; technically her hands were on the reins, but she kept them loose, and closed her eyes, and hoped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The ride took a small forever. But no-one noticed her absence in time to catch her. And for that, at least, Makoto was satisfied.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Beast: A one-sided conversation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Evening closed around the chateau like a black, deadening fog. The Beast watched it over the parapet, gauging its advance like a besieging army’s.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You shouldn’t have brought her here,” he growled abruptly to the darkness.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nothing answered him. The wind blew cold with the oncoming night.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No good came of the last one. No good will come of this one, either. If she has any sense at all, she won’t come back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Silence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, of course I won’t chase her. She’ll spend half her life looking over her shoulder. She’ll be afraid enough not to start any rumors. That’s all I wanted out of it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Silence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Beast snarled, and drew himself up taller. “The important part is that no-one. No-one. Will ever threaten the roses. She didn’t even have the presence of mind to keep the one she took. It won’t get out. No-one will come after them. That’s the only thing that matters. The </span>
  <em>
    <span>only</span>
  </em>
  <span> thing. He’ll be safe.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Silence, and the night was still.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Beast grew still as well. And when he spoke again, he did not roar. His voice was quiet as a cat’s footfall. “What did you do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nothing answered him. After a moment, he turned with another low snarl, and stalked back inside.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His answer came with the dawn.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Makoto: Arrival</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>In the dawn’s light, Makoto thought, the approach to the stallion’s home must have been a thousand times more glorious and more welcoming than poor Usagi and Crescent’s stagger through the frozen night. It was still cold, certainly, and she was sleepless and exhausted, but she wasn’t frozen, nor soaked, nor hungry, and she’d been certain that the horse bearing her would know exactly the way home, even if she was uncomfortable in the meantime; those made all the difference.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She could see from the beginning how carefully everything had been arranged. The symmetry and fertile lushness of the gardens. The grace of the extravagantly designed water features. The vast extent of the chateau itself. At first she couldn’t imagine how such a thing could possibly have been kept secret so close to her home; and then she laughed aloud (her horse turned an ear for a moment, then accepted it as a quirk of his present rider’s, rather than forewarning of an attack by some mystery hyena) and shook her head. “Magic,” she sighed. “Of course it’s magic.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her grafting knife didn’t seem much of an offering, against all of this. She straightened her aching back anyhow. At least she hadn’t fallen off on the way. All she would’ve needed was to have her life’s one attempt at a Grand Gesture sabotaged by a whump in the forest and a woeful, half-lost walk home.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The stallion paced into the courtyard, perfectly calm and even and solemn, and halted before the stairs up to the grandly overdecorated doors.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto nudged him. “You’re supposed to go to the stable,” she said. “So that I can make sure you’re taken care of.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t move.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This isn’t the stable,” Makoto said. Then paused. “Or is it the stable? It doesn’t look like the stable, but I suppose if the lord of this estate has hooves, he might decide to house you in a guest room.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Apparently, the horse’s magical abilities, whatever they actually were, did not extend to a grasp on humor. He waited.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto sighed. “All right,” she said. “If you’re going to be like that.” She eyed the distance to the ground worriedly, then set her jaw and dismounted. The jar of striking the ground was noticeably harder than usual; her own height certainly didn’t offset the stallion’s. Still, it was just a shock, not a tumble or a twisted ankle, thankfully. She reached for the stallion’s reins, set on leading him to the stable if nothing else, presuming she could find the stable.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sidestepped out of reach.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She folded her arms and glared at him. He tossed his head. She was almost certain that shouldn’t have taken the reins out of her reach, but a warm breeze kicked up at just the right moment to send them flying; then he stepped forward and nudged her with his nose toward the doors.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine,” she said, giving up and almost laughing. “Fine. Have it your way. Are there invisible stable hands, too? Do you get combed by --” The laugh burst out, and she turned to the doors, only whispering “combed by gnomes!” to herself once on the way in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The doors opened for her. She walked through them without a moment’s pause, into the grand room of marble and glass, crystal and silver and gold, gleaming as the golden light outside banished the shadows and warmed the stone. In the center of the room, a chandelier hung from a setting that put her in mind of a particularly elaborate compass rose. As she watched, the candles flickered to life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hello,” she said, not loudly, not shouting at all. “I’m here to take Usagi’s place. She has too many people who’d miss her. I hope that’s all right. I’d like to speak with the lord of the estate, but if he doesn’t want to speak with me, that’s all right, too. If it’s not all right, I hope you’ll give me a sign. If it is all right, I’d ... appreciate some idea of where I’m supposed to go? I didn’t exactly think this through all that far.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nothing happened, except that a breeze set the candleflames dancing. Makoto waited a few polite moments, before giving a nod to the silence and making her way further in. She chose a doorway not quite at random, simply because she liked the forest scene embroidered on a cushion in a chair near it, and began her explorations.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Usagi had told her about the strangeness of the ways the rooms connected, and Makoto was not particularly surprised when she turned to backtrack to the place she’d come in and found herself facing a little back stair instead. She let herself wander without concern, following through open doors and making choices based on the bits of décor, always going toward flowers when she could. For a little while, she wondered if the rooms even existed when no-one was in them, or if they were created out of whole cloth when people stepped into them, and vanished into the mists, never to exist again, when no longer in use. She hoped not. If anyone had gone to all the trouble of making the embroideries and tapestries, it would be an utter shame for them just to vanish away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally, she came upon an open door that led into a smaller room, with a faintly spicy scent, and a small table filled with covered dishes beside a couch. She couldn’t help but smile. “I take it this is the guest room,” she said aloud. “Thank you.” And she stepped inside, settling down. The food set out for her didn’t quite match Usagi’s description: eggs, yes, but in the form of a sliced omelette drowned in honey. Fine white bread gave her something to soak up the last of the sweetness with (not to mention protect her fingers from the sticky trap Usagi had mentioned), and a handful of cured olives and bits of soft cheese rounded it out along with the milk.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She mused over the food as she ate it. Omelettes were quick, and the olives and cheese could have been hauled out in a moment; but the bread would have needed rising and baking. Were there people here beside the Beast Usagi had seen? Was she eating something planned for his breakfast, or dinner? Or had she been lost in the halls for longer than she thought?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Soon enough she’d had her fill, and started to rise, then sat back down to stare at the table in confusion. She’d seen Usagi’s family eat, yes, but not like this. She had no idea whatsoever what the etiquette was supposed to be. Should she cover the dishes, to keep flies and mice away, presuming any flies and mice dared to put their wings and noses into a place like this? Should she leave them be? Would it upset whatever unseen person or power put the food here if she cleaned up after herself, the way some fairies could be insulted by a thank-you or banished by a gift?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The sharp sound of a hoof on stone echoing in the halls, semi-regular beats that did not at all sound like a human gait, came as something of a rescue. At least bad-tempered hosts were something she understood.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She knew Rei, after all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A wriggle to one side gave her space to rise to her feet as the sound approached. It came steadily nearer, she noticed. Not suddenly appearing out of nowhere, not twisting between close by and far away. The rooms and corridors behaved for him, even if they didn’t for her and Usagi. That was a good thing; it meant that she was almost braced for it when the Beast appeared in the doorway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Almost, because she’d thought Usagi had exaggerated the way he looked. But there were the horns, there were the claws, there were the blood-red eyes catching the firelight and gleaming. There were the tips of fangs, just visible as he frowned at her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Frowned, not snarled. That was an improvement. Better-tempered when you hadn’t touched his garden without permission.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mako drew a breath, considered trying a smile, dropped the idea, and dipped into a curtsey instead. “Good morning, sir. Thank you for your hospitality, and for a very fine breakfast.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he spoke, there was a hint of a growl to his voice, and something ominous to the way he shaped some of his consonants … but honestly, Mako thought, he sounded more perplexed than anything else. “What are you doing here? And where did you get that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto lifted her head so she could blink at him. “The breakfast? It was in the room when I came in?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.” The Beast gestured at her, or at one side of her. “The flower. In your hair.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mako put a hand up to touch the rose, which had stayed cooperatively in place even as time and the ride drew wisps of hair away from the tail she’d pulled it back into. “I must look a mess,” she said reflexively. “I’m sorry. Usagi gave it to me when she got home. I thought it was only best to bring it back here when I came – you love them so.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The frown grew more intense, but the fangs weren’t bared more than they needed to be to talk. “She left it behind. Put it down to try to mount my horse, and didn’t pick it up again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was Mako’s turn to be perplexed. “It was in one of her packs,” she said. And then realized, belatedly, that there was no way that Usagi had done her own packing. Not with what they’d found.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now the Beast did snarl, but he turned aside as he did, directing it at the fire rather than Makoto. “Of course it was. How foolish of me.” He gave a red glare in her direction. “That answers one of my questions. What are you doing here?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I said that when I came in,” Makoto answered, and then tagged on hastily, “sir. I thought you heard, when I found all this here? I came to take Usagi’s place. She has too many people who’d miss her. I don’t have family. She and her friends will miss me, but that’s all. And ... and Usagi said no-one took care of your roses. I thought ... perhaps you might want someone to help. The one she brought me is so lovely as it is. I can’t imagine what they all might be like if they were cared for.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Beast scowled at that last, but a moment later his expression began to shift. Slowly. Very slowly. Until he reminded her, in a strange way, of a startled kitten. Admittedly, possibly a demon-possessed startled kitten, but a startled kitten nonetheless. “You came here freely? She and her family didn’t force you – threaten people you care about, or drive you out of the house?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, sir. She doesn’t even know. She won’t till she wakes up.” Technically, Makoto thought, ‘till someone wakes her up to ask questions’ still counted as until Usagi woke up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Beast drew a breath. Let it out slowly. Drew another, and huffed that one out, as if determined to make a too-late effort at appearing annoyed. “You should send her horse back to her, then. With a note. And anything else you see in the house that you’d like to send her and her friends, as a remembrance, so long as it fits into her horse’s packs.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I – sir, that’s immensely kind of you.” Makoto stumbled a little in her startlement. “But you sent so much with her already, when she came back – are you sure you wish to part with more?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Beast’s eyes narrowed, and he glowered at the fireplace again, but his voice stayed level. “It’s little enough. Besides. Anything that came with her was for her sake. This is for yours.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Makoto didn’t know what to say to that. The Beast solved her problem by turning and stalking away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She waited to leave the room until the sound of his hoof had faded. (His other foot did make a little bit of a noise, she found, when he was close enough; a faint scuff of the pads, sometimes, or a tiny ticking of claw-tips against the floor. She suspected that if he meant to be quiet, it wouldn’t; but she wasn’t certain how the hoof could be quiet at all.) Then she ventured out, to try to find things she could send back to the others.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In a room arrayed with shelves of carved animals and tapestries of hunting scenes, she found a sleeping wolf made out of smooth ebony; she wrapped it in a red cloth to show that she meant it for Rei, and hoped that Rei might understand she meant that the Beast had shown her no hint of meaning harm. She didn’t come across the amazing clock Usagi had mentioned, and so couldn’t find the jewelry-box she thought Minako would have loved, but a folding hand-mirror with a crescent motif would suit the cheerfully vain girl wonderfully; she added a jeweled comb for her long blond hair, and with a mischievous smile, a little ivory comb meant for Artemis. Hopefully Minako wouldn’t rake his skin with it, or try to comb his ears. One never knew. In a cabinet full of jewelry, she found a brooch decorated with a five-pointed star and stones in the girls’ favorite colors, and added that to her collection for Usagi. Other bits and pieces she picked up here and there: a bag of raw lapis stones for Usagi’s father that he might have someone turn into expensive paint, hairpins for Usagi’s mother sparkling with amethyst and pale topaz, a wonderfully articulated toy horse that could stand on its own for Shingo. The library was as vast and imposing as Usagi had hinted, but nevertheless Makoto managed to find in it three different books with detailed paintings of human anatomy, showing muscles and tendons and bones to a degree of accuracy and detail that she’d never wanted in her life to know about; she chose one for Aimé, half expecting to finding the Beast over her shoulder and shouting when she turned around, but nothing happened. It must have been all right. No matter whether the book was likely to be the most expensive thing she was sending.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d been hunting presents for the household staff for a good half-hour before it occurred to her that clawed hands might not be able to turn delicate pages anyhow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was a similar problem to the presents-for-the-staff one, really. There were all sorts of expensive trinkets everywhere. But expensive trinkets wouldn’t help a gardener, or a laundress, or a maid; they’d just be attractions for thieves if they kept them, and put them at suspicion of being thieves themselves if they sold them. What she really wanted for them was either money, that they could use or hide as they chose, or better tools and clothing, that would save them money and time for years. Or both –</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well, no. What she really absolutely wanted for them was their not to have to worry about any of these things; to be able to receive trinkets and delight in them the way Usagi’s friends would. But that needed a lot of changes in their status, or in the world as a whole. What was practical to give them now was other things. Maybe she could add a note to Usagi, that if she meant to share out the money she’d been given, she should split Makoto’s part between the household staff. Or maybe …</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe she could try to make things a little more comfortable for herself, too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Excuse me,” she said aloud to the air. “If I’m going to be staying here, I’d like a couple of things. First, I’d like to be able to find my way around properly. I don’t mind if you’d rather keep scrambling how the rooms go together, but would you mind at least scrambling them reliably the same way, so I can learn how to get from one to another by myself?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The air didn’t answer. But the Beast had been confused over what she’d said when she came in; he hadn’t heard her. So whatever had lit the candles for her must be something else that knew she was there. She hoped it could understand her, even if it didn’t respond.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe it was just the chateau itself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe it really was ghosts. Or gnomes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe she wouldn’t joke about gnomes out loud anymore, till she was sure.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Second,” she said, “I’d like to be able to do some things that aren’t ... ah ...” The words failed her; she looked around at the rooms helplessly for a moment. “In ... quite such impressive surroundings? I don’t know what’s here and what’s in outbuildings, and I don’t know how to get there. But I’d like to be able to get to things like the kitchen and storerooms, and whatever sort of shed you use for garden tools, and see if you have spares. And wherever you dry herbs. I don’t ... I’m not really comfortable just sitting around and admiring things, you see. I like to be working.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She felt a warm breeze in her hair, and heard the creak of a door behind her. Turning, she went to investigate.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It proved to be a room full of wardrobes, of jewels pouring out of their boxes, of cushioned seats before mirrored vanities.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s not the kind of work I meant,” she said, and went right back out, closing the door.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It creaked hopefully behind her. She turned to take another look.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The shelves full of carved animals were awfully familiar. A sigh, and she closed the door again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The third time offered another glimpse of the library.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” she said to the air. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But that’s not the kind of thing I’m made for. I like doing things with my hands. And I’m still looking for presents for people, like the lord of this place told me to – I really need to figure out what I should be calling him – but now I’m looking for practical presents. Really good knives for cooks. Sturdy and comfortable shoes for people who have to be on their feet all day. Things like that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This time, the door offered the little room with the warm fire, and its table bearing lunch. Makoto blinked at it. “Is it that late? Really?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The lack of answer was more or less expected, but she paused for one before stepping inside anyway. The delicately woven basket she’d picked up to carry her chosen treasures went onto a different side table, and she paused to admire the book and the carving for another moment before seating herself. “Thank you,” she said to the air. “I’m sure it’ll be wonderful.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The midday meal was a lighter one, bread with a cheese and herb spread, a mint-heavy salad dressed with peppered oil and vinegar, a little sliced meat in a heavily spiced sauce, the early peaches Usagi had mentioned a miracle in themselves. Makoto considered what this meant about the unseen cook’s idea of the amount of work she intended to put in, and decided she was going to have to have another word with the air later. But not now. Now might look ungrateful, and she was grateful indeed, particularly for the peaches.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When she picked up her basket and stepped out of the small room again, it gave her a hallway, like the one the Beast had made his way through. The door immediately next to that one was marked with a golden inlay, the familiar and elegant curves of a ringing bell. She considered it for a moment, but checked the other direction first, and found a door waiting open there.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It led into a quieter-seeming chamber. The walls were hung not with elaborate tapestries, but with a restful green cloth that matched the cushions of the sofa. Windows looked out over the gardens, suggesting that this place was on a higher level in the building. The tables and cabinets were finely worked, but subdued, rather than gilded and enameled and glass-inlaid. To one side, another open door showed a slice of a similarly decorated bedroom, the bed curtained and canopied in the same green, and the belongings she’d brought with her and left on a certain overly intelligent horse laid out and ready to have places found for them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At the foot of the sofa were two packs, of the same design as the ones Usagi had brought home. One was open, and when she saw the shoes lining it, she laughed aloud. The other one she nudged with a toe, and it clanked heavily. “I’ll take that one as a given,” she said to the air, “and not test it for trowels and shears. Thank you.” She set her basket down, and arranged the more specifically gifts carefully on top. “I don’t have anything to wrap them in,” she added apologetically. “Would you be willing to take care of that? It seems incredibly disrespectful to use the dresses or the tapestries – or the bedcurtains! – and I haven’t seen anything more everyday.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She paused; had no answer; waited anyhow, and then got up. “Are these my rooms?” she asked. “Do I really get two? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, there are so many. But just because I don’t see other people here doesn’t mean you’re not. I’m not putting anyone out, am I? I really don’t want to cause you any trouble.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Another pause. She offered at last, “If it’s all right, then, I’ll go and see the bedroom, and put things away. Then I’d like to go out to the garden. I’d really prefer not to have to climb out a window to do it, so I’m grateful for the possibility that things might be settling down a little. I hope your giving me windows means you like the idea.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After a moment, she went to go and make herself at home, or as much at home as she could in the great empty, quiet place. It did not surprise her at all that the packs were gone when she came back out. It did surprise her, just a little, that the hall and the other doors were still there.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Aimé: Musings, and an alarming discovery</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>By the time dawn’s light began to brighten the house, Aimé was, as usual, up and dressed. It was an utter necessity in the life of the household. Certain things had to be done and out of sight before the cook and the maid arrived for the day. Most especially, she and her mother both had to be impeccably groomed and attired, to avoid any chance of the maid spotting something out of place and offering to make adjustments herself.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As a result, it was Aimé who made the first coffee in the morning, and brought it and a cup of broth up to her mother before helping with her hair and wig. She was fond of that little quiet time between them. An honest time, when the family secret could be relaxed for a little while. That made it easier to indulge in other forms of honesty, too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maman,” she said today, “I’m afraid Usagi’s gone and gotten herself in some trouble again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her mother sighed, but utterly without surprise, and held still while Aimé settled the powdered wig carefully in place and checked the ribbon tying it back. “More than usual, or you wouldn’t have bothered to mention. Something that will call the lot of you away?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Possibly,” Aimé admitted. She left it at that for a moment while she circled her mother, peering attentively for any stray strands of hair. “It might not be for a few weeks, or it might be tomorrow, depending on what the others decide to do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not knowing the timeframe is terribly inconvenient,” her mother said. “But the girls are very good connections for you. It’d be worth it for that alone, even if they weren’t your friends. Don’t worry about it, my angel. We take care of ourselves when we’re away with clients, don’t we? Just make sure to be careful if you have to be away at the wrong time of month. They might understand, but some of them *</span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span>* talk, and --”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And we can’t afford for them to say the wrong thing to the wrong person,” Aimé recited dutifully. “I remember, and I still want to be able to learn. Shall I help with your shoes?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please.” Her mother set about her cosmetics, darkening and lengthening her eyebrows. “Be careful. Leave a note if you can. Or send one.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will,” Aimé promised, and that was the end of that conversation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her own coffee she drank after, with a small roll. The consensus opinion among physicians was that eating breakfast anytime soon after waking was bad for one’s health, but Aimé found that it made her very uncomfortable to go entirely without, and her mother’s broth wasn’t quite enough. A little bread would see her through. And it wasn’t as if anyone visiting the Tsukino household would ever be permitted to go hungry, or indeed to go less than thoroughly stuffed unless they ducked very quickly indeed. Her coat went on the moment it was safe from crumbs; two handkerchiefs went into her pocket, just in case Usagi needed one again. She debated for a moment, then opted to take a cane, just in case someone got overexcited and dragged them into somewhere they shouldn’t be; it wasn’t much of a weapon, but she might be able to fend a threat off long enough for Minako to throw Artemis at it. Literally. Angry cat claws in the face had distracted a would-be robber before.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She settled her cocked hat on her head, and the transformation was complete by the time she greeted her mother’s cook and maid at the door. She would always be the physician’s son to them, the heir of the house, the one they hoped wistfully might one day move somewhere with more convenient housing for the servants and, for that matter, more servants to spread the work among, perhaps employing spouses and children. Doctor Mizuno was certainly wealthy enough for it. Clearly it must only be emotional attachment to the house that kept him there.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One day, Aimé was certain, the medical profession would stop ignoring the skills of the women that surrounded it. One day they’d admit midwives to their ranks, and grant that caring for children sometimes conveyed a certain amount of pediatric medical knowledge. One day it wouldn’t only be men who were surgeons and physicians and apothecaries.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For right now – well, it wasn’t only men who were surgeons and physicians and apothecaries. But it wouldn’t do to be the women who got found out, and set off a hunt through the profession for more, either. No matter how many suspicions Aimé had about the number of them who might be disguised the way she and her mother were.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the meantime ... well. It didn’t hurt the disguise in the slightest that Aimé Mizuno was known to be spending time with three of the more eligible young women in town. As long as none of them actually set their sights on “him,” and so far they’d been more inclined to see Aimé as a friend than as marriage material, everything was fine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Usually.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kidnappings to fairy castles by mysterious flower-obsessed angry Beasts were, even for Usagi, not usual.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé dwelt on that as she walked, brisk enough to keep herself warm. It helped that the night hadn’t grown too cold, and the sun was over the horizon enough to start to help. The snow itself was strange this time of year; not as strange as everything else, but it tied in with Usagi’s getting lost (yet again) and arrival at the fairy castle. Presuming that it was indeed a fairy castle. Aimé made a mental note not to take that description literally, and considered further. Snow that kept Usagi from getting home. Snow that drove Crescent to the castle. Snow that accompanied Usagi on her way home, and explained her delay, and kept people from going out looking for her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Very conveniently unseasonal snow, all in all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But who would have arranged it? Either the Beast was telling Usagi the truth when he implied he was displeased about having guests, and was therefore an unlikely candidate; or he was lying, and might be secretly behind it. But if he were secretly behind it, it seemed unlikely he’d have let her go home at all, let alone for an entire month. Aimé was fairly certain that even the Beast’s brief exposure to Usagi would tell anyone with any sense at all that after a month, Usagi wasn’t likely to remember a thing about anything she was supposed to do unless everyone around her kept reminding her. So the Beast was probably not behind the possibly-magically-influenced weather.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unfortunately, Aimé was fresh out of other possible candidates. Magic just ... wasn’t something she was concerned with. Rei was, but that was her grandfather’s influence, and Aimé was fairly dubious about the magical abilities of priests. If they really could do so much, then why was Rei’s grandfather’s shrine out in the woods, almost as middle-of-nowhere as Usagi had been before she found the castle? Why was he the one exiled from town, and not Rei’s father? Rei and her father didn’t get along at all. Surely she’d have preferred her grandfather be there instead; or, failing that, she’d have preferred to live with her grandfather altogether. Instead, she dealt with life as the mayor’s daughter, being hauled out in her best and most decorative dresses and instructed to be elegant and beautiful and diplomatic and ideally silent every time there was a single man the mayor wanted to sway in his direction. If priests had power, why hadn’t Rei’s grandfather rescued her yet?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For a moment, she thought about the chance that Rei’s grandfather might have been behind the weather, as part of some secret clever plan to that end. But she dismissed it at once. First, the cold did awful things to his joints. And second, Rei’s grandfather was slightly less good at keeping clever plans to himself than Minako was. It definitely wasn’t him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Therefore,” Aimé murmured to herself, “there is at least one person involved in this that we haven’t seen yet. Possibly more.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She thought about the riches that Usagi had unknowingly brought back, and about the Beast’s anger, and tried to reconcile them with one another. “... very possibly more.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time she reached the Tsukino residence, she’d noted a dozen things to do to try to learn more about this. Examine the strange horse and its tack. Make Minako and Rei and Usagi talk about the styles of the dresses and the jewelry, and note down details of interest, things they remembered or argued over, for more research. Inventory the gems; perhaps the number and frequency of different types might tell them something. Go through the coins and sort them by the images on obverse and reverse, and figure out where they were from, and when. There were any number of possibilities for getting more information in a day or three, let alone in an entire month. Aimé felt downright pleased about the chances of one option or another yielding something useful; and in that mood she waved to the young man shoveling half-melted slush out of the walkways. “Good morning!” she called. “Would you happen to know where Makoto might be this morning? Is she still helping in the kitchens, or has she already gone to bring breakfast up to Miss Tsukino and her guests?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The young man glanced up at her, probably grateful to see anything that didn’t involve one kind of mess or another just now. “No, young sir; I haven’t seen her all morning.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé tipped her hat to him. “Thank you all the same. I know I’m calling a few hours early for Miss Tsukino; may I wait inside in the usual place?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The young man grinned briefly. “Sure you don’t want to do the rest of your visiting first? Waiting for her’ll take up the rest of your day.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Laughing was tricky. Aimé limited herself to one “Ha!” and kept the rest of her reaction to body language and eyes, and something of a smile. It was good enough, though. She had the license to go inside, even if she couldn’t directly seek out any of the girls. Someone would tell Makoto that Usagi had a guest, and Makoto would bring more coffee, and they’d have a chance to talk before the others got up. To sort things out, quietly, and have a good part of the work done by the time everyone else got there, so that they could bring them in with examples and without argument, and without Usagi getting upset again over trying to figure out what to do.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Usagi getting upset was never the end of the world; she recovered as quickly and wholeheartedly as she wept. But it was just better for the nerves of everyone concerned if they could avoid it. And Aimé and Makoto actually believing in mornings made that so much easier.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé settled down in the room the girls met in, the room that might as well have been Usagi’s sitting room even if it technically belonged to her mother, and reviewed her memories of the things in the packs while she waited for Makoto. Which brought her face-to-face with the one she’d carefully been avoiding thinking of while walking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“What’s clearly happening,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Rei had said, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“is that a manipulative jerk was already using guilt and threats to get at Usagi, and now he’s using bribes, too.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All the beautiful dresses. That they were in colors and sizes that suited the girls could have been chance. Or could have been magic, just making them to order, or remaking them, magic dye and magic alterations. There were all sorts of stories about fairies who made beautiful things, and while Aimé didn’t particularly like leaning on fairy stories as a corroborating source, it was all they really had. And magic making dresses for the people who opened the pack would explain why there was one for Aimé, too.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But there was a coat, and a waistcoat, and breeches. There was an outfit for Aimé’s disguise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And there was also a dress. Both.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Perhaps there was magic that knew her secret. Or perhaps there was some person who knew her secret, and wanted her to know that it was known.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The thought horrified her; anyone else knowing was a potential weapon against her family, against her mother, opening the door to poverty and ruin on the one hand, and worse, her mother’s clients wanting vengeance for the imagined slight of their physician not having been a man. But when she put that horror aside and examined it more closely, it seemed a very strange way to make a threat. Much the same way that the Beast’s demanding Usagi’s return, then sending her home with piles of jewels and silk, seemed a very strange way to make a gift.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No. No matter how risky any of it was, it wasn’t the time yet to draw any conclusions at all. They needed more information before anything at all would come clear. A month gave them time to get that information, if they didn’t waste it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She </span>
  <em>
    <span>wished</span>
  </em>
  <span> Makoto would come up. Even if the other girls were still asleep, Makoto knew the way Usagi slept, and how to pick her path around her visitors to retrieve things from the bedroom without disturbing anyone. She’d be able to fetch some of the jewelry, or the coins, and they could make a start by themselves at cataloguing things properly. In the mean time, all Aimé could do was wait patiently.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And wait.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even her patience was on the verge of running out when there was a tap at the door, far more tentative than Makoto’s. “Please, come in,” Aimé called.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The young man she’d seen outside was still in the same clothes he’d been wearing, slightly damp from meltwater he’d managed to splash himself with. Mostly cleaned up, though. Mildly disreputable. He looked endlessly embarrassed as he held the door for Usagi’s far more put-together mother.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m so very sorry for keeping you waiting,” Ikuko Tsukino said. “But we didn’t know anything had happened till you asked, and we’ve been busy trying to make sense of it since then.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Aimé had risen to her feet the moment she’d caught sight of Ikuko’s pale yellow dress, and bowed; now she bowed a second time, more hastily, buying a moment to organize her response. “I’m terribly sorry myself,” she said, “that I’m not sure what you mean? Has something happened?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something other than Usagi bringing a giant horse into the stables and not checking in with her mother when she came home, that was. But that wasn’t too out of the ordinary for Usagi.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” Ikuko said. “No-one’s seen Makoto this morning. We thought she might be sick, so we checked her room, and some of her belongings are missing. I’m afraid she seems to have run away.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Rei: More arguments; Makoto's note; the girls make plans</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Rei opened the door at the knock, and Aimé came back in, accompanied by the distant yet perfectly audible wailings of Usagi insisting at her mother for the fortieth time that Makoto </span>
  <em>
    <span>wouldn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> have just run away and it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>all Usagi’s fault</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “Nothing’s missing except the horse,” he said. “And since that isn’t the Tsukinos’ horse, there certainly won’t be any charges of theft.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t believe you’re worried about </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> at a time like this.” Rei glared at Aimé, but mostly for form’s sake; she shifted the chair they were using as the ahem-accidental block on the door opening back the inch or two necessary, then sat down in it herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing’s missing from the treasure,” Minako sang out. “I had Artemis check.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-- this is not the time for your weird fantasies about your cat, either.” Rei folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. “All right. Usagi has her mother distracted telling her about the scary Beast that kidnapped her and switched her horses. Her mother is never going to believe this unless we show her the stuff, and if we show her the stuff, her mother is going to think her daughter’s being used as a courier for some gang of criminals. What are we going to do about </span>
  <em>
    <span>Makoto</span>
  </em>
  <span> being kidnapped?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Makoto packed her own things,” Aimé said. “She wasn’t kidnapped.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She packed the </span>
  <em>
    <span>gold and emerald tiara,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Rei pointed out. “Do you really think that anybody that saw that in a servant’s room wouldn’t stoop to kidnapping to get their hands on it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Minako blinked up at Rei from her place on the floor. “Do you really think Makoto would let anybody kidnap her? Just like that? We’d all have heard the noise it made when she punched them into a door and it came off its hinges and went WHAM! on the floor.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rei paused. “You have a point.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And she took the horse that was supposed to take Usagi back to the Beast’s chateau,” Aimé said quietly. “She wasn’t kidnapped. Unless you count it as kidnapping herself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So we just have to find the fairy castle!” Minako reached out and nodded Artemis’s head for him. He hissed and swiped at her hand. “How many fairy castles can there be that close?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Zero,” Rei said. “There are zero fairy castles.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fairy is a rather ill-defined classification.” Aimé sounded apologetic. Aimé always sounded apologetic. “But the place itself is very likely real. It’s either hidden very well, and off the maps, or it’s only approachable by certain methods or routes or times. Still. We have things that spent time there, and possibly came from it. That’s a beginning to narrowing down where it could be, isn’t it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you talking about using some kind of divination?” Rei asked. “On the jewels, or the coins?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aimé hesitated. “I suppose that might be an option, if you know of any that are reliable?” he said uncertainly. “But I was thinking that if we can look at the styles of the jewelry, we’ll be able to work out when the castle was in communication with the rest of the world; and if we look closely at the coins, we’ll be able to tell when it had trade relationships. And the material from the dresses must have come from somewhere. That somewhere might possibly not be just magic...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rei stared at him. “Makoto’s disappeared, Usagi has a month to get back to </span>
  <em>
    <span>an impossible place</span>
  </em>
  <span> or a monster comes and eats her, and you want to start a </span>
  <em>
    <span>research project</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aimé glanced away awkwardly, leaning to put a hand on his cane and draw it in front of him. “We could spend a month searching the forests instead,” he said. “But other people live out there, and none of them have ever mentioned running across a vast estate with an unpleasant and protective owner. So that doesn’t seem very likely to be useful. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Do</span>
  </em>
  <span> you know any reliable kinds of divination? All the sorts of prophecies or Sibylline books I’ve ever seen have been rather subject to multiple interpretations. Mostly depending on who was reading them and how much they wanted to find support for what they thought people ought to think.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rei finds people’s lost things all the time,” Minako offered. “That’s divination, isn’t it? Rei, can you find our lost Makoto? No, wait, she’s not a thing. Can you find our lost Makoto’s … what would she have with her? Hair? Can you find her hair?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rei narrowed her eyes at Minako. “Do you </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> want to know if it’s been chopped off her head and made into a wig?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Minako yelped, and put both her hands up to try to protect her long yellow locks. Given that they reached her waist, this was moderately pointless, but at least it kept her from tormenting the cat further. “No no no no no!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What I can do,” Rei said, returning her attention to Aimé, “is go talk to my grandfather. He’s a priest. People bring spooky stories to him and expect him to know what to do about them all the time. Maybe he’ll know what to do. Or maybe someone came to him forty years ago because they were afraid that seeing an estate in the middle of the forest meant they’d been possessed by a demon.” And maybe she could sit with the fire there at his shrine, and maybe it would show her something useful. She started to get up out of her chair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aimé brightened right up, sitting taller instead of trying to make himself disappear behind his own cane. “That’s a good idea. We can work on keeping Usagi from running off, and look through the things that were sent, and try to come up with more ways to find out who this Beast really is and where his home might be.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good,” said Rei, and pushed the chair out of the way of the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Except.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rei focused her glare over her shoulder, back on Aimé.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aimé lifted his chin, not flinching away this time. “Would you mind waiting till tomorrow to leave? I’d like your opinion on some of the dresses. And it’s getting later in the day. Everything bad about this so far has happened when it’s dark. I’d be grateful not to spend all night sitting up and worrying about you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Aimé had said that something might happen to Rei, she’d have scoffed at him and walked out the door. But Aimé </span>
  <em>
    <span>worrying</span>
  </em>
  <span> about something happening to Rei, completely needlessly, was utterly plausible. She rolled her eyes, and sat back down in the chair, not bothering to put it back in the way of the door opening. “All right. Fine. We can look at the dresses. Because obviously we are all going to save Makoto and Usagi by having a </span>
  <em>
    <span>private fashion show</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stranger things have happened!” Minako folded her own arms, attempting to give Rei a haughty look. Haughty looks did not work particularly well aimed upward. “My father got everything he had starting with making someone a pair of boots.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your father is a marquis,” Rei pointed out to Minako. “It’s kind of hereditary.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Boots</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Minako insisted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aimé rubbed at a temple. “Dresses,” he said. “Please look at the dresses. I don’t want to already have a headache when Usagi comes back in here crying.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The dresses had not magically changed since the night before, and Rei chafed at the need to go through it all again; but apparently Aimé didn’t know the simplest things about fashion, and Minako’s tendency to run off down every conversational path that presented itself (and every conversational path that didn’t actively grow legs and run away, and a few that tried to) would have made explaining the details a nervewracking experience even for the patient young man if Rei hadn’t been there. Here, a bit of particularly fashionable lace; here a distinction between the way the pleats in the back of Usagi’s dress hung and the way those in the back of Minako’s were tailored; here a discussion of the split sleeves in Rei’s, and an argument over what Rei remembered about the neckline of Makoto’s missing gown and what Minako insisted was the case. By the time Rei started accusing Minako of not being able to tell the difference between Makoto’s dress and her cat, Aimé was beginning to look nervous.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So of </span>
  <em>
    <span>course</span>
  </em>
  <span> that was the moment in which Usagi exploded into the room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aimé was up on his feet in an instant, driven by what was undoubtedly outright panic at the idea of their all being drowned in tears. But Usagi didn’t cling to him for comfort and support. She wrenched herself free of his hands instead, and shoved a basket into his arms, and waved something pale and crackling so fast that it blurred.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Crescent’s back!” Usagi cried. “And </span>
  <em>
    <span>Makoto sent a note!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Minako and Rei both moved at once. Rei braced for a collision – but no. It was just her, grabbing Usagi’s arm, making her keep the piece of paper steady instead of risking losing her grip on it altogether so that it’d fly into a candleflame or the room’s fire. Minako was grabbing for the basket of colorfully wrapped parcels instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Trust Minako.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rei drew Usagi’s hand down somewhat more gently than she’d originally intended. “Okay,” she said. “There’s a note. What does the note </span>
  <em>
    <span>say</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know yet,” Usagi confessed. “Aimé, could you read it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aimé sighed. “Usagi. Usagi. You have to be able to </span>
  <em>
    <span>read</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am! But Mako used her really nice handwriting! And that’s harder, it has all the loops and everything!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And,” Rei said firmly, “if you want Aimé to read the note, you need to </span>
  <em>
    <span>give the note to Aimé</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Usagi. That means you have to put it where Aimé can reach it, and then actually let go of it. Unwrap your fingers. They’re crumpling the paper.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crestfallen, Usagi complied, and Rei let go of her once the note was safely in Aimé’s hands. Aimé adjusted his glasses and peered down at the writing. Loops and everything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dearest everyone,” Aimé read aloud. “I can’t tell you where I’m writing from, since I don’t know the name of the estate, and simply calling it the Beast’s Estate sounds terrible once you write it down. I want you to know first of all that I’m safe, and now so is Usagi. I’m sorry that I worried everyone. But if I’d told you where I was going, you wouldn’t have let me, would you? And I’d rather you worried about me for a day than about Usagi for ever.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi sniffled, and glared at the letter. “Don’t I get anything to say about this?” she demanded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hush,” Rei told her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aimé continued, as accustomed to Usagi as the rest of them. “I went to the Beast and offered to take Usagi’s place, and I think he’s all right with that. He asked me to send you all things as a farewell present, and I’ve done that; I hope I didn’t miss anyone, and I hope you can sort out who everything is for. No, I can’t say I didn’t miss anyone. I do miss you all, already. I’ll have the gardens to keep me company, and the candles, and the chateau. But all of them together isn’t worth as much as any of you. I’ll be all right, though. I have been by myself before, and Usagi hasn’t, and that’s all there is to it. I’ll be all right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You read that before,” Minako said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She said it twice,” Aimé answered, and continued. “Please send everyone my love, even Shingo, and I’ll write if I can. Your friend always, Makoto.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was silence for a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I bet he’s going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>eat</span>
  </em>
  <span> her,” Rei muttered, and Usagi’s wail rose up again on the instant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For once, Minako helped rather than making things worse: she pushed a neat little bundle of soothingly pink silk into Usagi’s hands. “That,” she pronounced, “must be yours.” Two more followed, a lumpy one wrapped in impressively deep blue, and a thin one wrapped around and around in spiraling pale-yellow ribbons. “And those have to be for your parents.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi hiccuped, blinked down at them, and tried to juggle them so that she could reach the pink one without dropping the other two. The idea of putting them down didn’t seem to occur to her. Aimé tried to reach and help her, but Minako instantly hefted a much bigger pale-blue oblong one into his way, and he had to stop and grab it before she dropped it on his foot. An awkward walnut-brown one that looked distinctly animal-shaped was thumped down on top of it. “Yours, and Shingo’s,” Minako sang out. “Don’t let Usagi throw it into the fire! Reiiiii --”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The pile she’d made from the basket was almost gone; there were only two left, a rich golden yellow, and a deep, deep red. Rei picked up the obvious one. It felt solid in her hands, not heavy, not weighing her down, but solid. Reliable, she thought, and then frowned at herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unwrapping the cloth showed her ebony, polished like a chesspiece, shining in the light from the room’s windows. It was a wolf, detailed right down to the delicate thinness of the ears and the texture of the fur, and she wondered how in the world it could have survived the trip intact. She considered whether it might be a secret message from Makoto: </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Help! I’m being held captive by a wild predator! He really is going to eat me!”</span>
  </em>
  <span> It seemed unlikely, though, since the carving was curled into a half-moon, jaw resting at an angle over a foreleg and pinning its own paw to the ground, nose almost on the ground itself. Eyes closed, ears relaxed, sleeping.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rei was a little disconcerted to realize she almost wanted to pet it. Hastily, she wrapped the carving back up in its cloth, and looked up to the sound of Usagi’s and Minako’s squeals.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Minako had tucked a jeweled comb into her hair, just in front of the bow so that nobody could actually see it clearly except for bits of glint, and was alternating brandishing a little ivory comb in Artemis’ direction (the cat had fled to the far side of the room) and admiring herself in a little hinged hand-mirror. Usagi was showing off a brooch to Aimé, and the sniffles were threatening, but hadn’t quite manifested yet. “Look! Look at the colors! There’s your blue! And there’s a green for Makoto, it’s like, it’s almost like she wants to tell us she’s still sort of here!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aimé nodded absently. The pale blue cloth had been folded and set to the side, with Shingo’s present on top of it, and he appeared to have forgotten entirely that either existed, because his package proved to have been one single book, and holding it open was enough to occupy both his arms and all his attention. Rei leaned a little to peer at it. The angle was bad, but she didn’t need a good angle to make out the image.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was a very detailed drawing of a casually strolling skeleton.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rei grimaced, and casually cushioned her wolf against her side. Well. She supposed that that was still good evidence Makoto wasn’t under duress. If she’d had the time free to carefully pick out the most ridiculously expensive and distressingly educational book possible for Aimé, she couldn’t possibly be too worried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So she </span>
  <em>
    <span>must</span>
  </em>
  <span> be all right,” Usagi concluded. “She </span>
  <em>
    <span>must</span>
  </em>
  <span>. She’s just … somewhere else. For right now.” She drew a deep breath, and pinned the brooch to her bodice, miraculously managing not to stab herself, rip the cloth, or drop the jewelry in the meantime. “But … what do we </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We do just what we’ve been intending to do,” Aimé said firmly. “You need to give your mother her present and your father’s, yes </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> Shingo’s, and talk with her, and show her the note, and calm her down. And you need to take care of Crescent. Extra care, because we want her to be settled enough that if we need her to she might be able to lead us back the way she came. And we’ll work on finding where the Beast’s estate is, and how to get there. Rei’s already planning her trip to see her grandfather. And this book isn’t a common one, especially not since some of the pages have been painted; my mother knows everywhere that books like this one can be found in the area, and I can go and talk to the printers and the booksellers and see if I can find where this copy came from. And Minako...” He trailed off, suddenly uncertain again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, that,” Minako chirped, and gave up threatening the cat in favor of draping the yellow silk about her neck and posing for the rest of them. She pointed the comb at Usagi’s brooch. “I’ve seen something like that before! All I have to do is remember who we bought it from and where they were. I’m sure someone at home knows.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Usagi flinched, and covered the brooch with a hand, drawing away with a distressed little whimper. “Do – do you need to take it with you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That, Rei thought, was a sure way to never see the brooch again. Maybe she could talk Minako into going with her to see Grandfather, and then escort Minako on her own way, to make sure the brooch didn’t accidentally get dropped down a well on an abandoned farm in the middle of an entirely different forest Minako would claim was enchanted, probably in the wrong country.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Minako declared, and both Rei and Usagi relaxed, the latter considerably more audibly. Minako reached back and tapped the glinting comb in her hair with the ivory one in her hand. “This one will do! It’s even closer. Artemis and I will be sure to find whoever made them! Even if they’ve been dead for five hundred years and we have to find their gravestone, and then chase their family line down the centuries and search for the sole forgotten heir hidden from the blood feud that destroyed the rest of them, the last living soul entrusted with the forgotten secrets of goldwork and enamel!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“… goldwork isn’t exactly a forgotten secret,” Rei said dubiously.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Minako blinked at her. “I meant forbidden. Or maybe misbegotten?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aimé said hastily, “At least we all seem to have a plan.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I had a plan when all this started,” Usagi mourned. “And look where that got us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe if you actually get up in the morning this one will work better,” Rei retorted, and that was the end of coherency from Usagi for the rest of the evening.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Makoto: The gardens; dinner with the Beast</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Should the links fail, the art in this chapter can be found at <a href="https://lizleeillustration.tumblr.com/post/637073730160492544/im-delighted-to-finally-be-able-to-post-the">lizleenimbus's Tumblr.</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Makoto did not work in the gardens that first afternoon. She spent time getting to know them, instead. She walked among the flowers and herbs, the hedges and lawns and tamed waters, the utterly and wonderfully inexplicable orange trees and the out-of-season fruits and blossoms and ripened vegetables, and let the effect wash over her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was more than one hand at work, she was certain. Oh, most of the gardens breathed with the same style, beauty after beauty, filled with quiet spots and bright little surprises. Little nooks for private meetings. Places to rest the body, or just to rest the eyes and ready them for the next round of admiration. That was the master at work. But someone else had planned for gatherings, for sport, for lawns created to be durable alongside those created to be lush. Those had been incorporated into the greater design, in the same way that the plants in the kitchen gardens had been chosen for usefulness, but rearranged both for the sake of what grew well alongside each other and for the sake of beauty along the edges. The view from the chateau and from the main gardens would be preserved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The gardens seemed to be immune from the architectural confusion that reigned inside the house, as far as Makoto could tell; the only real oddities were that every now and again a breeze might blow from an unexpected direction, and that the scent of Usagi’s roses (she should think of them as the Beast’s roses, but with all the gardens belonging to the Beast, it hardly seemed to make them stand out) might come to her at any moment, anywhere on the estate. Once on the far side of it, in fact, and right next to the artificial stream that coursed down from the courtyards, which was particularly unfair; water usually cleared the air of other smells, so the roses’ went straight to the heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She did not try to look at the roses. Not that first day. Only at everything else.</span>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://64.media.tumblr.com/fce7badf84790ec2c87e079c2ced5bf6/31641cc46cc29384-7e/s1280x1920/ac5fce4528f1007a5280ea8ce0f5659dd981f4c1.png"></a>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Dusk gathered in its own time, and candleflames flared up in the windows of the chateau. Makoto was not surprised that there were no shadows of people to light them. She accepted the implicit summons, and made her way back in; the halls were more consistent for her this time, and she was able to find her way to the hallway with the guest-room (was it a guest room? How would she know?) and her own. She tried the guest-room’s door, but this time it didn’t yield to her hand; she laughed, and shook her head, and went to her own room. There was an elaborate gown laid out, though not so elaborate she couldn’t manage it by herself, and ribbons for her hair, and jewelry and embroidered slippers to match it, and an array of cosmetics.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She considered them all for a long, long moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Compromise?” she said at last, and washed up, and settled into chemise and underskirts and gown; she tucked her feet into the slippers, and put her hair up with the ribbons. She kept her own earrings, though, the tiny carved roses she loved, and left most of the cosmetics aside. A little, yes. But looking like a porcelain doll was in fashion, and she wanted to be able to smile without worrying about whether her face would crack.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t look right without an accent. She held up the necklace to herself, and wrinkled her nose a little at the heavy emeralds; she could wear it, she admitted, and it would even look lovely, but … it would make her look like someone she wasn’t. She refused that, and set it back down, and looked around for something else to serve.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rose was in her hair again when she stepped out of the room, and this time the guest-room door opened for her, letting her in to the sweetly spiced smoke of the little fire to fend off the evening chill, and the table drawn up with even more covered dishes than before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a larger table. There was a massive chair across from where she’d sat before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She took a deep breath, lifted her chin, and seated herself all the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No dinner companion arrived, and after a few minutes she conceded and began trying the arrangement of the meal. Usagi’s description and her own experience told her a little of what to expect, but not everything. The roast chicken in a spiced wine sauce, for instance: she was braced for the idea of it, but the taste was something different. She couldn’t even identify all the elements; there was something in it she’d never encountered before. Perhaps a mystery plant in the kitchen gardens. Perhaps something drawn from elsewhere. The wine had to be from elsewhere, didn’t it? She hadn’t seen any vast expanse of grapes. Or of wheat, for that matter, and there was always bread.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bread was something everyone ate, though. What were the things she kept finding that she didn’t always expect? Wine; wine wasn’t strange, but the mystery cooks did things with it that she wasn’t accustomed to seeing. Spices everywhere, stronger and more varied than she was used to. Honey: all sorts of sweet things mingled through the meal, instead of reserved to the end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She picked up a piece of asparagus and studied it. People </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> used to roll around and glory in spices, ages ago, before the fashion changed to embrace the way food actually tasted. And a cook at the Tsukino estate had told her about how his grandfather had had to cook everything with sugar for his employers, right down to the fish and the meat. But he’d also said his grandfather talked about asparagus coming back into fashion, how nobody had eaten it for ages; and he’d said sugar, sugar specifically, not honey.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Old-fashioned food. From when spices were impressive. From when sugar was hard even for the wealthy to lay hands on. From before tastes had changed, and changed again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How old were the recipes?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How old was the cook?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She drew a deep breath, and took a bite, and found that however old the cook was, he knew a secret the Tsukinos’ cook didn’t: how not to overcook the tips of asparagus. Perhaps … perhaps she wouldn’t worry about having mysteries all around her. Just while she was eating the meal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was nearly finished, and arguing with herself about whether to be virtuous in one way and stop or to be virtuous in another way and try the particularly tempting custard dish garnished with mint leaves and pomegranate seeds, when she heard the sound of a hoof striking stone in the hall. Abruptly, the idea of anything involving pomegranate seemed a very bad idea indeed; at least Usagi’s lessons said it’d been a bad idea for Persephone. She folded her hands in her lap and straightened up, determined not to let the Beast find her looking uncertain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His shadow filled the doorway. He himself stepped through it. And then he stood there for a moment regarding her, the firelight and candleflames glittering crimson from his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good evening, Makoto,” he said at last.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good evening,” she answered automatically. Was she supposed to stand up? She wasn’t being dressed like a servant. Or treated like one. But he outranked her anyhow. Even if he didn’t dress like it. What was she supposed to do? And what was she – “I’m very sorry,” she said earnestly. “I don’t know what I should call you. Is there a name you’d like me to use? Or a title?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He frowned at her. Irreverently, she wondered if that’s how he’d wound up with the features he had: the legacy of a thousand generations of parents telling their children their faces would freeze that way, distilled into an unexpectedly working magic. She glanced away hastily to keep the thought from making her laugh aloud. The table. Surely the table was safe to look at.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His chair made a horrible grating noise at being drawn back, and he settled into it. Awkwardly. Very awkwardly. His legs weren’t really what chairs were usually made to suit. Still, he poured himself a goblet of the spiced and watered wine, and sipped at it, all pretending his claws made no ticking noises on the metal whatsoever.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you call me in your thoughts, when you think of me?” he asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Makoto felt heat creep up her cheeks, and prayed that the color of the firelight would hide her embarrassment. “I – ah – I don’t really know what </span>
  <em>
    <span>to</span>
  </em>
  <span> call you, what we were calling you when Usagi was telling her story was terribly unfair --” No, no, nothing was going to hide her embarrassment. Unless the Beast had suddenly been struck deaf, or possibly if the floor and the earth beneath it opened up and swallowed her. She reached hastily for her own drink, considered the amount of alcohol probably in it, drew her hand back, and stared at her fingers as if they had personally betrayed her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Beast made a rumbling sound. Makoto braced for the table to be shoved over on top of her. But instead, he said, “Tell me anyhow. It won’t be the first time I’ve heard it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Did he sound – no. He couldn’t be. She risked a glance up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The smile that the Beast hid behind his cup was twisted, bitter, but a smile all the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Makoto drew a deliberate breath. “We called you the Beast, sir,” she said. “Which isn’t fair. You’ve been very polite,” sometimes, at least, “and more than generous.” Mostly. “But we didn’t have anything else to call you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Beast made a light, easy gesture to the side with his wine, as if to brush the matter aside, and then set it down. “Beast will do,” he said. “It’s not wrong.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But it’s not </span>
  <em>
    <span>fair</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Makoto repeated. That was one point at which she could agree with Usagi. Things were so rarely fair. “It’s not right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Very few things in this world are fair. And the world doesn’t care much about right, either.” He shook his head, slow, to keep the mass of his hair from misbehaving. “Beast will do. Tell me how you’ve been occupying your time. I know you found your friends gifts, and sent them off; but I don’t know how well what you found pleased you, and I don’t know what you’ve done in the hours since.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I --” Makoto hesitated. Ran to a full stop, unable to find words to speak at all for a moment. But the Beast simply waited, patient, studying her with a polite interest that didn’t seem to connect with claws, or fangs, or snarling. And she thought then that, rather than wanting praise from her, or fear, he might actually want to know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s too much,” she said then. “That’s not a bad thing. It’s only that there’s so very </span>
  <em>
    <span>much</span>
  </em>
  <span> here, and it’s all scattered and confused. It’s hard to make sense of, and you can’t be sure if something pleases you or not until you can make sense of it, can you? The things I found for the girls – yes, those pleased me very much, the idea of them getting them. I think they’ll like them. I think they’ll help them come to terms with what’s happened, and understand why I snuck out. The way that … that I was helped to find things for my other friends, when it wasn’t the kind of thing that the, that this place seemed to want to show me … that pleased me, too. There are a lot of expectations this place seems to have that </span>
  <em>
    <span>don’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> please me. It seems to think I should be a different kind of person than I am. But it seems to be able to be reasonable about it, and that’s good, because I want to be polite, but I don’t intend to change.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“People aren’t always able to do what they intend,” the Beast said. “Certainly not always only what they intend.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s true,” Makoto said. “But it doesn’t change what I </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> intend. Which is to be me. And to help take care of your flowers. I went for a walk in your gardens this afternoon.” A little more daring: “Did you design them yourself?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Beast blinked, then blinked again, the reddish shine of his eyes vanishing and reappearing. “No,” he said after a moment. “That … was someone else.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who was it?” she asked. “Is there any chance I can talk to them? They made such interesting decisions, and everything’s kept up so well --”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.” The word wasn’t a reproof. It was a solid, unyielding negation, but there wasn’t any malice in it, not even any chiding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was also not even any explanation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Makoto felt herself straightening without conscious intent. “Why not?” She realized what she sounded like an instant too late, and added hastily, “I mean, I accept that it won’t happen, but I’d like to know the reason. They didn’t pass away, did they?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That … would be a way to put it.” The Beast’s head lowered a little, and he stared at his wine. Makoto found it a little disconcerting to realize that he might be concerned about meeting </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span> eyes, instead of the other way around. “There are … understand, Makoto, there are things I cannot tell you. Not will not. Cannot. I ask you to accept that, too: that there are limitations on me that you will not have explanations for.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That seems unfair to you, too,” Makoto said. The Beast’s head started to lift again, and she crossed her arms, nevermind the elegance of the dress. “Yes, yes. The world isn’t fair. You covered that. Fairness is something </span>
  <em>
    <span>people</span>
  </em>
  <span> do, when it happens at all. I happen to be people, and you seem at the very least an awful lot like people, so I </span>
  <em>
    <span>intend</span>
  </em>
  <span> to continue saying it when it seems like it matters. That’s a limitation on </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and the explanation for it is that I’m me, and I care about it when things aren’t fair.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Beast stared at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For no reason at all, or just for the expression on his face, his cat-eyes reminded her, just for an instant, more of Artemis than of some hungry gladiatorial-arena lion. She tightened her fingers on her own arms in a desperate fight against the urge to lean across the table and try to scratch him behind an ear. The table had to be too wide to pull it off. Besides, she wanted to have two hands, and she wasn’t entirely sure she’d keep both if she tried it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally, the Beast blinked. Blinked again for a longer moment before the glow of his eyes reappeared. And then a third time, longer still, as he drew a breath to speak.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will you marry me, Makoto?” he asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>What?!?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Makoto lunged to her feet. She didn’t knock the table over on the Beast in the process. She did, however, knock over the couch she’d been sitting on; it thumped back soundly, its wooden leg scraping her calf and lifting her skirt up embarrassingly high in back. She didn’t care. Her mind kept circling around </span>
  <em>
    <span>maybe it really was a good thing she didn’t eat the custard with the pomegranate seeds.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “What in the world are you – what possessed you even to </span>
  <em>
    <span>ask</span>
  </em>
  <span> that?!?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Beast’s goblet had also not been knocked over. But only because he’d put a clawed hand up to steady it. He stayed seated, level, without a hint of the snarling he’d done at Usagi. “It’s only a question,” he said. “You can give any answer. Yes, or no, or I don’t know, or whatever you like.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Makoto said instantly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He nodded. No threats. No anger. Only that nod, and then rising, with another grating slide of the massive chair. “Good night, then, Makoto. May I speak with you again tomorrow?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She formed words silently, but couldn’t make any of them into sensible sentences. And finally said, “Yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He bowed to her, solemn and steady, and took the cup of wine with him as he turned and left the room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a good minute and a half after he’d gone before she was finally able to look away from both the doorway </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> his seat, and disentangle her skirt, and pick the couch back up and fuss it into its proper place. “No wonder you’re so confused about how normal people work,” she said to the air. “With </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> around...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A sharp little gust of wind came down the chimney. The fire flickered wildly. Makoto couldn’t shake the feeling it was laughing. She gathered up what dignity she had left, and retreated to her room. Tomorrow. She’d ask him what he’d been thinking tomorrow. Maybe she’d even get a look at the roses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How had it only been one day?</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Rei: Into the woods</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The fastest way to get to the shrine Grandfather tended in the woods was to ride, of course, and Rei had done that on occasion; her beautiful black mare knew the way very well indeed. There was just one problem with it. Rei didn’t know how long she’d be staying. The shrine didn’t keep stables. And the way things were going, Rei did </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> want to chance anything to do with any horse at night.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d walked there on her own two feet before, from the first time when she was eight and stubborn and angry with her father, to the last time in the fall when she’d wanted to linger in the flame-colors of the leaves. She was sure she’d walk there again. But it meant that she wasn’t taking the gown that had been sent her, only a little handful of gems and coins wrapped up in an ordinary cloth and lying concealed in the depths of her basket, and the carved wolf Makoto had given her. Between the food for herself on the way, and the wine for coaxing her grandfather, and the cloth to cushion them both, she wasn’t too worried about accidentally breaking the carving’s ears.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Granted, she was a little worried about herself here and there, when she caught herself wondering if the carving would like it better if she moved it to the top and tugged the cloth back from over its nose and head so it could see the trees around them and smell the breeze. That was the kind of ridiculous thing Usagi would insist on. It was kind of adorable when it was Usagi. Rei preferred a little more practicality. Not to mention a closer relationship with reality. Carvings didn’t breathe.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Magic fairy carvings might, she imagined Minako saying.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It is </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> a magic fairy carving,” Rei muttered under her breath, and glowered at a convenient tree. At least the snow had melted. There was that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There wasn’t much traffic on this road, but there was enough to keep it open, more or less. Goods were hauled back and forth for market, and more of them for seasonal fairs, so a few times a year the ruts were dug deeper and the annoying branches cut and all the edible things in line-of-sight of the road were eaten and the birds were mostly not impressed, except for the scavengers. A couple of enterprising alewives would turn innkeeper for the duration. They’d profit off the trade. So would Grandfather; more than half the drivers would stop at the shrine for good-luck charms. Something about the reputation of the person making them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei gritted her teeth. She’d given Usagi good-luck charms till Usagi should be able to fall into a hundred-year-old latrine and not only emerge with a lost gold ring but have her dress launder perfectly and without a hint of stain. But she’d never thought to give Makoto any.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Or Aimé. Or Minako, though Minako seemed to have enough good luck on her own. Maybe it was her cat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe Rei would make charms for all of them, while she was visiting. Even the damned cat. Even if that would probably lead to someone rescuing it from Minako and then Rei would have to deal with </span>
  <em>
    <span>two</span>
  </em>
  <span> inconsolable weeping blondes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe she should make one for herself, and they’d weep on someone else. Or at least she might have the good luck that this trip would fall into one of the Father’s-too-busy-to-notice-you-were-gone periods. It wasn’t that she hadn’t told him; she had, and he’d made an acknowledging noise. And she’d left a note, because acknowledging noises usually meant he was pretending to hear her and thinking about something else. It was just that whether or not he knew she’d be gone, if she wasn’t there when he wanted her to do something for him, she’d hear about it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His expectations made her so </span>
  <em>
    <span>tired</span>
  </em>
  <span> sometimes. Grandfather expected things of her too, but he only expected her to do reasonable things, like chores, and thinking things through, and meditating. He didn’t expect her to know everything in advance. And if she did – unlike Father, Grandfather would listen.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sometimes he’d dismiss it and then run straight into the trouble she’d warned him about, but he’d at least have listened first.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei considered what her options were if he dismissed her reasons for </span>
  <em>
    <span>this</span>
  </em>
  <span> visit, then scowled and kicked a tree. It was a careful kick, rather than a really effective one; the last thing she needed was to break a toe this far from both town and the shrine. That also meant it wasn’t nearly as cathartic as she wanted it to be. Someday, she promised herself, she’d figure out how to have boots made that would look ladylike while also letting her kick things. They’d probably have points. And padding. And, she threw in while she was fantasizing, they’d keep her feet warm and painless while she was picking her way along wagon ruts. At least it wasn’t fair time. At least there wasn’t much traffic.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which of course meant that not three minutes later, she could hear a wagon creaking and thudding its way along behind her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei let out an irritated breath and turned to the side of the road. There was a particularly thorny patch, but past that all she needed to do was tread down some dead stalks of last year’s wildflowers to be able to get out of the way. Her red cloak was certainly enough warning to let the driver go past. Unless the driver was secretly some kind of threat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She almost hoped he’d secretly be some kind of threat. There were birds that liked the road and the gleanings they could take from it, and she had the suspicion a couple of them that she got along with might be nearby. Having a problem she could </span>
  <em>
    <span>solve</span>
  </em>
  <span> would be such a relief.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well, no. Having to explain to her father afterward might not quite count as solving.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her undesired company didn’t prove to be much. Two patient brown horses drawing a farm wagon, empty except for shed bark and twigs; someone hauling wood from the forest into town, on their way back again. Someone who didn’t look tall or old enough to be dragging parts of tree trunks around, even chopped into pieces. Even bundled up in a couple of layers of warm clothes, he couldn’t have had more than a few inches on Rei, and looked like he’d be less successful swinging an axe for hours on end than she would. Admittedly, her success at it would surprise quite a few people. Maybe he had surprises under his cap. Along with the ridiculously fluffy blond curls poking out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He slowed his team as he caught her frowning at him, and offered her a tentative, uncertain smile. “Good morning,” he called to her. “I’m sorry; have I offended you already? I didn’t intend to. We haven’t even met.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei folded her arms. Carefully, to avoid tipping her basket. “Good morning,” she said by way of ritual, following it up immediately with, “Not you. It’s a bad day.” A bad three days and counting, but that was detail he didn’t need.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The wagon creaked its way to a halt opposite her, and the young man twisted in his seat to face her more directly. “I’m sorry to hear it. Would saving your feet a little make it better? We’re going in the same direction; you’re welcome to a ride.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei felt her jaw starting to tighten again. “I’m not interested,” she said. And added, just in case the stranger was getting any unhealthy ideas, “My grandfather’s expecting me, and he’d think it very strange if I didn’t arrive on time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your grandfather must be very strange himself, if he’d be upset with you for arriving early.” The young man offered her another smile, this one less uncertain. His eyes were bright, apparently guileless. Rei had seen Minako pull the apparently-guileless look far too often to fall for it from anyone, ever. “But if you’re certain. I’m just … honestly, I wouldn’t recommend anyone walking alone out here these days. It may be spring now, but it’s been a long winter, and winter keeps remembering things it left behind and coming back to get them. And people say they’ve heard wolves.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei narrowed her eyes at the stranger, deliberate as a knife.  “I’d rather take my chances with the four-legged kind, thank you very much.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“All right, all right!” The young man laughed, and shifted the reins to one hand, and held the other up in what looked like an attempt at surrender. “You’ve already said you’re not interested. I’ll stop worrying at you. Though if I hear any screaming, I </span>
  <em>
    <span>will</span>
  </em>
  <span> come back. And if I hear anyone mentioning a missing granddaughter...”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think you’d know my grandfather,” Rei replied. “You don’t seem the type.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not going to ask what type your grandfather </span>
  <em>
    <span>would</span>
  </em>
  <span> know.” He shook his head, watching her for a moment longer before resettling. “Good luck, whatever you’re hunting.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Rei waited till he was well away, out of sight where the road curved, before stepping back out into the road and starting to study her own reactions. He hadn’t said anything offensive. He’d largely taken a no. She might’ve been amused by some of the things he’d said, if someone else had said them. And the blond curls and the wide eyes were even cute.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But every time he’d spoken, she’d tensed up, gotten angrier, gotten more prepared for a fight. She’d kept her distance. She’d chased him away. And she didn’t know </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Only that her emotions had boiled up the way they sometimes did. Hunches. Impressions. The kind of thing her grandfather would listen to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Was it only chance that he’d mentioned wolves, when she was carrying one with her?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She added both of those things to her list to ask her grandfather about, and walked on.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>